hey everybody what's up this is Al Barrus with the US Fish and Wildlife Service
Southwest Region listening to Shop Talk
he's not very big for a grouse but what he lacks for in size he more than makes
up for with his impressive dance moves and vocals
he's the attwater's prairie chicken in April about 300 people came to see the
males of this barred grouse inflate his yellow air sacs and shimmy back and
forth for his annual meeting ritual celebrated at the festival and national
wildlife refuge bearing their name there are only a few dozen of the chickens
left living in the wild mostly at the refuge near Houston they once numbered
about 1 million birds throughout the coastal grasslands of modern-day Texas
and Louisiana like most endangered species their numbers have been
shrinking over the past century due to habitat loss in more recent decades the
expansion of invasive red fire ants to the southeastern US has dealt a near final
blow to this prairie chicken subspecies by spring of 2014 they numbered around 100
left in the wild in the spring of 2016 flooding wipe out an entire generation
of nests and eggs the next summer in 2017
hurricane Harvey spelled further to disaster the heavy rains drove the birds
along with their predators to the remaining slivers of dry land a few who remained
were gathered up by biologists and sheltered at the Houston Zoo they've
since been repatriated to the refuge so far 2018 has been stable and the
attwaters festival attendees weren't disappointed this year to get a deeper
look on the recovery signs today we're talking shop with Mike Morrow he's a US
Fish and Wildlife Service biologists at the Atwater prairie chicken National
Wildlife Refuge in Eagle Lake Texas he earned his PhD studying the attwaters
along with other partners Mike's charged with the daunting task of
recovering a bird whose wild population is heavily dependent on captive breeding
and sheltering in zoos the attwater's prairie chicken is essentially functionally
extirpated from the wild and so we have several captive rearing facilities
at several zoos across Texas that rear attwaters for release back into the wild
we're releasing birds onto attwaters prairie chicken National Wildlife Refuge
and private ranch land less than three percent of Texas lands are public and
less than 1% of the attwater's original habitat the Western Gulf Coastal
grasslands remains pristine thus cooperation with private landowners is
the main hope for the recovery yeah attwater's prairie chicken's currently occur in two
locations in Texas right now one is here at the attwater prairie chicken refuge
where I work the other is on ranch land in Goliad County Texas being able to
work with landowners interested in restoring Atwater's population is
critical to the ultimate goal of removing the attwaters from the
endangered species list most of Texas is in private
landownership so without the help and assistance of private landowners covery
of the species which is emblematic of healthy tall grass prairie without the
help of landowners recovery of the Atwater's simply wouldn't be possible and
therein lies the real challenge private parties can be skeptical about letting
their livelihood to public conservation efforts however what's good for the Atwater's
prairie chicken is also good for cattle ranchers that water's our residents of a
good quality coastal Prairie habitat that once occurred on some six million
acres along the coast of Texas in Louisiana
however right now it's been estimated that much less than 1% of that six
million acres remains one of the early pioneer researchers that did a lot of
research on Atwater's in the late 30s and 40s stated that it's
upon the existence of adequate Prairie habitat that the welfare of the prairie
chicken depends so Atwater's prairie chicken management basically is synonymous with
Prairie management so there are several things that landowners can do that would
benefit not only out waters but probably their ranching and cattle operations as
well ranchers that manage their native prairie grasslands using sound range
management practices are already practicing prairie chicken management so
what all I mean by that prairies in this part of the world are
and in general are a very dynamic ecosystem they evolved with various
disturbances that maintain these areas as grassland if the prairies aren't
disturbed in some way they will eventually grow up into fresh lands and
ultimately forests so things like grazing and periodic fire are important
to maintain prairies but the key is to apply enough disturbance to maintain the
open prairie landscape but not so much that the characteristic grass species
are eliminated cattle have that in common with the attwater's they prefer
grasses so keeping out invasive brush and trees is good practice to provide
forage ranching the chicken prefers the grass for an unobscured view and they
really depend on that wide-open landscape to deter predators so that
they're not ambushed they're very strong fliers and can outfly just about
anything on on wings at waters management is something that private
landowners can and do on their own you know that can mean cutting brush
treating with herbicides treating with prescribed fire or a combination all of
the above those kind of practices you know not only improve the Prairie for
prairie chickens but but also result in increased forage for livestock
operations as well more recently Micah's calling has made a major breakthrough
that waters recovery they discovered a major setback for the chicken and it's
something that causes trouble for pretty much everybody in the southeastern
states it's the red imported fire ant the fire ants started to make a big
impact on Texas lands by the 1960s Mike and his team discovered that the ants
compete with newly hatched chicks for insect forge which was leading to chick
starvation they started treating the fire ant nests on the refuge land with
insecticide if we treated to reduce fire ants we could increase insect abundance
by about 27% but even more importantly where we treated for fire ants brood
survival during that critical 2-week post hatch was comparable to historic
out waters bridge survival so now we have a solution maintain the prairie
landscape with moderate grazing and periodic fires remove invasive plants
and ants things were going swell at the refuge then along came two consecutive
years of devastating floods on the tiny wild population the workaround for a
natural disaster is redundancy the alders needs more habitat so they can
recuperate from future flooding which happens periodically in this part of the
world to get this kind of population redundancy we need more habitat and this
comes down to identifying more lands that can be converted back to native
Prairie so that these disaster events aren't so catastrophic to the population
a major roadblock to this is the native grasses have been replaced by an
introduced grass which have higher maintenance cost thanks change for more
food for cattle a goal for conservation agencies is to highlight the economic
viability of the native grasses native prairies have been used to support
ranching operations throughout Texas history native pastures don't require a
lot of monetary inputs in the form of fertilizer and water to keep them
productive like these so-called improved introduced pastures native prairies
can't be stocked as heavily as improved pastures it doesn't carry as many
animals per unit of area as safe pastures planted to introduce species
like Bermuda grass but the data I've seen suggests that
when looking at the bottom line native prairies are just as profitable as these
introduced improved pastures because these native grasses and have evolved
with periodic droughts that are characteristic of prairie environments
native prairies are probably much more resilient to these kind of dry
conditions than introduced improved species the economic stability of
private lands can be further enhanced through safe harbor agreements with the
US Fish and Wildlife Service which can protect landowners operations landowners
are oftentimes uncomfortable with creating habitat for a species that is
listed the program was developed under the Endangered Species Act it's called
the safe harbor program whereby landowners can enter into agreement to
manage for the out waters with the hope that the actions that they put on the
landscape will result in an increase in prairie chickens on the property however
as a part of that safe harbor agreement landowners are only responsible for
maintaining the baseline number of prairie chickens present when the
agreement was signed and for most remaining grasslands within the historic
range of out waters that baseline is currently 0 that gives the landowner
some flexibility if they change their mind about their management in the
future and it you know relieve them from stress and worry over potential burdens
that the endangered species or perceptions of burdens may impose if
they do indeed change their minds and want to take management of the property
in a different direction sometime down the road Mike Morrow has been working
with the out waters for several decades and while recent years have been hard
for the attwater's numbers he's confident the recovery is on the horizon
I've been working with Pat Waters for a long time you know more than 30 years if
you count the time I was spent in graduate school it's been an incredibly
frustrating ride at times but I will say even with the setbacks that we've had in
the last 2 or 3 years with weather I'll say and on
just blowing smoke that I feel more optimistic about the out waters recovery
now that I have for most of my 30-year career yes the add water is in a tough
spot now but we think we now know what the limiting factor was that frustrated
our efforts for so long so we know what to do and the data that we've been able
to collect so far indicate that we're on the right track mother nature's Delta so
during a bad luck with the weather in recent years but that's not going to
last forever and I'm I'm more confident I've ever been that you know we're going
to make some significant strides in the recovery of that waters in the
not-too-distant future I don't want to count the out waters out yet we're gonna
get there that was Mike morrow with the US Fish and Wildlife Service southwest
region my name is al Burris and that's what's up
you