NMSU projects look at management of lesser prairie chicken

Southeastern New Mexico is home to a declining population of lesser prairie chickens where they inhabit a vast landscape of shinnery oak, native grasses and sand dunes. New Mexico Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit Ecologist Scott Carleton is leading three research projects through New Mexico State University on various life history aspects of this species to benefit their management and conservation. He and his team of graduate and undergraduate students work with state, federal and private organizations to provide solutions in hopes of better understanding the biology of these birds in New Mexico. His projects address the possible impacts of oil and gas development, seasonal use of the native and non-native Conservation Reserve Program grasslands in eastern New Mexico and impacts of habitat loss on federally managed lands by collecting data on seasonal habitat use, movement patterns, reproduction and survival of the lesser prairie chicken. "We need to be conservation minded and try to balance the needs of both animals and humans, understand how the two can exist in the same place, at the same time and not be a detriment to each other," Carleton said. The birds were added to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's threatened species list in early 2014. As a step below the endangered species list, this allows a flexible plan of action to determine the fate of how conservation is resolved among the five affected states. Almost all the birds in New Mexico are found within the shinnery oak ecosystem, made up of two- to three-foot-tall shinnery oak trees and mixed grasses where every spring the birds congregate on leks. Monitoring the leks — areas where the males perform their mating display to attract mates — gives researchers insight on mating patterns and is the time when population declines can be detected.  According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service website, the collective states will follow a plan established by the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies to meet a population goal of 67,000 birds range-wide. Using radio collars and satellite GPS transmitters, researchers are able to track the movements of the birds, learning what their daily patterns are. Because they remain in a five to six kilometer radius of the leks, any small changes to the landscape, if any, can be detrimental to the population...more