The Plight of North America’s Grassland Birds Jon D. McCracken Jon D. McCracken Bird Studies Canada Port Rowan, Ontario, Canada N0E 1M0 jmccracken@bsc-eoc.org Abstract. Winter et al. Batt Grassland birds have declined by 53% since 1970—a loss of 700 million adults in the 31 species studied, including meadowlarks and northern bobwhites. GBT owns and manages 78 acres at our Alfred Z. Solomon (AZS) Grassland Bird Viewing Area in Fort Edward, located in the heart of the Washington County Grasslands IBA. Despite the enormous scope of this problem, there is room for optimism if solu- tions are considered from the perspective of past wildlife management successes in North America. Bissonette, Koford We know of no grassland-bird study that has investigated this aspect of territoriality in relation to area sensitivity. Fuhlendorf Nest predation and Neotropical migrant songbirds: Piecing together the fragments. The “big four” grasses are big bluestem (Andropogon gerardi), little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparius), Indiangrass (Sorghastrum nutans), and switch-grass (Panicum virgatum; Reinking 2005, NPS 2017). Skagen, Coppedge, P. D. For example, both Cunningham and Johnson (2006) and Renfrew and Ribic (2008) found that models incorporating patch and landscape information were best in explaining density patterns for most grassland bird species that they studied. Effects of forest fragment size, nest density, and proximity to edge on the risk of predation to ground-nesting passerine birds. R. V. A typical approach is to calculate metrics that quantify composition and configuration of the surrounding landscape within multiple buffers (i.e., scales) that radiate from the survey point (e.g., Niemuth 2000, Bakker et al. Colonization rate depends on the ability of species to move across a matrix of non-habitat and the distance between patches (i.e., isolation). Many studies of habitat selection in grassland birds (e.g., Cody 1985, Wilson and Belcher 1989, Davis and Duncan 1999, McCoy et al. . Lima, . Across North America, birds that depend on grasslands are in steeper decline than most other groups of birds. S. G. , T. M. . Grassland ecosystems throughout the world have been greatly affected by humans, and this continues at an increasing pace. D. H. To produce a pattern of area sensitivity under the habitat-diversity hypothesis, then, large grasslands would have a greater variety of vegetation structures than small patches and, therefore, would be more likely to meet species' habitat structural requirements. , and Continued nationwide declines in some grassland-nesting bird species have increased awareness for the need to preserve, manage, and re-store grassland habitat in order to recover and maintain viable grass-land-nesting bird populations. , and Hunter , and Fletcher J. J. . Naugle One-third of all grassland bird species are on the 2016 State of the Birds Report Watch List due to steeply declining populations and threats to habitat. , Ribic F. R. 2005, Renfrew and Ribic 2008). Giraldeau . New research will be needed to evaluate these ideas; it may be possible to design field experiments to investigate some aspects of them. Horn, , D. E. U.S. Geological Survey. Native prairies in most of North America have been nearly extirpated over the past two centuries ().In response, many prairie bird species have adopted agricultural grasslands as surrogate habitat (2, 3).Given the loss of native prairie habitat, grassland agro-ecosystems are of new-found importance to conserving biodiversity (2, 4). J. R. . Several bird species adapted to grasslands that were grazed historically by tens of millions of bison, prairie … Western Meadowlark 5. Clay-colored Sparrow 1. Kadrmas M. L. (2) What are the historical explanations for area sensitivity? Samson, D. E. P. J. , and 2008), prompting a wide variety of research aimed at understanding these declines, as well as conservation programs trying to reverse the declines (Askins et al. Impacts of agricultural tillage on grassland birds in western South Dakota. We note that some studies (e.g., Johnson and IgI 2001) were done across large geographic areas, so number of studies for a species does not equate to geographic coverage. . h�bbd``b`�$��kqH�� �qD��A� �"����3012������q�� �� D. W. We know of no information regarding natal and breeding philopatry in relation to patch size. M. R. The metapopulation approach, its history, conceptual domain, and application to conservation. Prairies, in particular the tallgrass prairie, are among the most extensively altered systems in North America, owing to Native American management practices and subsequent settlement and development of agriculture by Europeans (Houston and Schmutz 1999, Higgins et al. 2007). , Walk Understanding area sensitivity of grassland birds in a landscape context will be a continuing area of research for some time to come (see Knick and Rotenberry [2002] for a related discussion of these issues for shrubsteppe birds). Effects of prairie fragmentation on predation on artificial nests. M. Keyser, We also excluded species results for which no effect was found, because a nonsignificant result does not demonstrate a lack of effect. Early work on forest-interior birds showed that patches that exhibited turnover between years tended to be smaller and more isolated from occupied patches than patches that did not exhibit turnover (Villard et al. J. L. Naugle E. O. Newton Blake , Maurer Storch By contrast, Bollinger and Gavin (1989) documented substantial breeding philopatry in both male and female Bobolinks. Johnson, R. E. . Brittingham Results for which no effect was found are not reported; nonsignificance does not demonstrate a lack of effect. L. W. D. E. R. R. . Both island biogeography and metapopulation theory (Hanski 1999) assume that larger patches contain larger populations, considering patch size alone, and so are less likely to go extinct by chance. , A landscape ecology perspective for research, conservation, and management. Little work has been done on grassland birds to determine turnover rates. F. L. These workshops were the impetus for this paper, and we thank the USGS Cooperative Units Program for funding these workshops. , and S. K. . Habitat as a driver for area sensitivity has rarely been considered in studies of grassland birds. Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. 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