Eventually a hen appeared—which caused an intensification of the displays and skirmishes. The small female seemed totally indifferent to all this activity as she moved about in the lek. (We were told that this was not the peak of the breeding season—otherwise more hens would have arrived and things would have heated up.) The show lasted about two hours, and then the birds wandered off into the vegetation. What an enchanting morning. I decided that God must have created the prairie chicken so He could have a good laugh anytime He wanted during the three-month season of the lek! It is said that some of the dances of the North American Plains Indians, particularly the Lakota, are based on this display—I would certainly love to see one!
At one time the Attwater’s prairie chicken was found throughout some six million acres of the tallgrass prairie ecosystem, from the Gulf Coast of Texas north to Louisiana and inland for about seventy-five miles. The windswept prairies were rich in biodiversity then, with many varieties of grasses. But in a sequence of events we are all too familiar with, more and more of this pristine land was taken over by human development and farming, and bush invaded the grassland when fires were suppressed. Year by year, the prairie chickens vanished: By 1919 they had gone from Louisiana, and by 1937 fewer than nine thousand remained in Texas. In 1967, Attwater’s prairie chicken was listed as endangered, and six years later the Endangered Species Act of 1973 gave added protection.
Today less than 1 percent of the original prairie once occupied by Attwater’s prairie chickens remains, much of it so fragmented that remnant pockets are too small to sustain viable breeding populations. Fortunately a refuge was established in the mid-1960s when WWF bought an area of about thirty-five hundred acres. In 1972, it was transferred to the USFWS, and today the Attwater’s Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge, sixty miles west of Houston, is more than three times its original size and comprises one of the largest remnants of coastal prairie habitat in southeast Texas. The only groups of Attwater’s prairie chickens in the wild today, other than those in the refuge, live on a tiny piece of land near Texas City.
The recovery plan for these birds calls for the establishment of three geographically separate viable populations—a total of about five thousand individual birds. To reach this goal, the USFWS first developed an active public outreach and education program to garner support for the birds; second, it is continuing active research; and third, it’s cooperating with government agencies and private landowners to manage prairie chicken habitat. A captive breeding program with the goal of reintroducing the prairie chickens into the wild was started in the early 1990s.
The first chicks were hatched at Fossil Rim Wildlife Center, Texas, in 1992; other organizations, such as Texas A&M University and several zoos, are taking part. Once captive-raised chicks become capable of independent survival, they are sent to a planned release site where their health is checked and they are fitted with radio transmitters. For two weeks, they are cared for in acclimation pens; then they are released into their natural environment. It seems that they are genetically programmed to adapt almost immediately to life in the tallgrass prairie. In other words, once free, they behave to the manor born.
In 2007, a new safe harbor agreement between the Coastal Prairie Coalition of the Grazing Lands Conservation Initiative and the USFWS was finalized to help private landowners to be part of the conservation effort to restore and maintain coastal prairie habitat. In August, thirty captive-bred juveniles from various facilities were released onto private ranchland in Goliad County, Texas, a stretch of prairie that has been kept intact by the same family since the mid-1800s. It was a milestone event, the first-ever release onto private land, and other chicks will be released there throughout 2008 and 2009. It is hoped that many more landowners will participate. Other captive-bred birds have been released on Texas Nature Conservancy property near Texas City and the Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge near Eagle Lake, Texas, where Terry Rossignol is refuge manager.
Throughout 2007, staff at the refuge worked hard to increase numbers of chicks hatched in the wild. Out of a total of eighteen nests (two of which were destroyed, but remade), twelve were successful, and seventy-seven chicks made it to two weeks of age. During these first weeks, they are very vulnerable—to predation, flooding, and starvation. It is, therefore, desperately necessary to keep as many as possible alive during this time. It was decided to ask for help from volunteers. Forty-three individuals stepped forward—Fish and Wildlife employees from across the region, a school group, a master naturalist group, and various others. Their job was to assist in collecting insects for the chicks and their mothers.
Each volunteer, armed with a large canvas net and some plastic bags, was sent out into the tallgrass on the refuge. The task was to sweep the net quickly back and forth through the grasses to capture as many insects of as many species as possible. These had to be transferred for safekeeping into gallon-size bags. Every day, collections were made from nine or ten in the morning until about four in the afternoon. One mother and her ten to twelve chicks can eat about twelve bags of insects per day for the first few weeks of the chicks’ lives. That is about one hundred insects each per day!
When I talked with Terry on the phone, he told me that, after all that hard work, only eighteen chicks survived. In fact, he said, they had thought the number was even lower, but then, in September, “four unbanded, un-radio-collared birds were seen.” Obviously they, too, were survivors of the breeding season. It still seems a low survival rate—but it is eighteen more birds to boost the breeding colony.
I asked him what keeps him going, how he gets over the disappointments and setbacks they face in this quest to save the Attwater’s prairie chicken. “Some days are more difficult than others,” he said. And at those low moments, he thinks back on the “little victories” that they have experienced and so is able to regain his positive attitude. He praised the many volunteers who work so hard on behalf of this colorful and comical prairie grouse. “There is hope,” he said, “so long as people are willing to help.”
In Terry, the Attwater’s prairie chicken has a powerful advocate. He has been directly involved with the birds since February 1993 and has no intention of giving up. His reasons for persisting? “I have always been drawn to the underdog,” Terry told me, “and I like challenges. The Attwater’s offers me both. And deep down, I want the Attwater’s to still be around so my grandkids can enjoy them as much as I do.”