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Sharing Your Land with Northern Prairie Birds a LAND MANAGER’S GUIDE

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Sharing Your Land with Northern Prairie Birds a LAND MANAGER’S GUIDE Sharing Your Land with Northern Prairie Birds A LAND MANAGER’S GUIDE Bird Conservancy of the Rockies Sharing Your Land Summary The Northern Great Plains (NGP) is a critical landscape This guide includes: in North America in that it provides vital ecological, • basic information about the NGP, hydrological, agricultural and recreational ecosystem • information about general bird biology, services. Unfortunately, grasslands are one of the most • general management guidelines, threatened systems in the world and, due to a number • bird species accounts that includes information of threats, grassland bird populations are declining at one about how to identify, habitat types used, natural of the fastest rates of all guilds in North America. history and nesting information, and more specific guidelines for each species in need of The NGP has been a stronghold and contains the conservation, and largest contiguous intact grassland landscape in North America. The majority of the region is privately • simple tools you can use to help with owned, with ranching being the predominant land conservation of prairie birds and other wildlife. use. Abundant opportunities exist for the ranching community and resource professionals to work together to continue careful stewardship of the land to maintain These guidelines will help you manage the land healthy ecosystems upon which livestock, wildlife and to provide the necessary habitat conditions for an humans depend. array of species. In some cases, the management recommendations for one species contradict the How to Use this Guide recommendations for another species. If both This guide is about how you can provide a little species are on your land, follow both sets of assistance to help grassland birds thrive on the land recommendations but in different areas, or consult while you do the same. It offers information about land with local bird experts to determine which species is management that can provide the things birds need a higher conservation priority in your area. while maintaining ranching operations. Information in this guide is applicable on both public and private lands but goals for management should be Acknowledgements determined by site potential. Not all birds will be on Funding for the updating and printing of the third your land. The first step is to determine which species version of the original Sharing Your Land guide are present or could be present if the right habitat was provided by the National Fish and Wildlife conditions were available. Compile a list of the birds Foundation, North Dakota Game and Fish, and present with the help of a local birdwatcher, biologist the United States Forest Service. or Bird Conservancy of the Rockies representative (visit www.birdconservancy.org). Alternatively, you can look over the species distribution maps for each species account in this guide and decide which species could potentially be on your land, based on their distributions. Management goals and objectives are usually very site specific and will be different under different circumstances. 1 Sharing Your Land with Northern Prairie Birds Bird Conservancy of the Rockies Northern Great Plains Ecology and Land Usage Ecology The Northern Great Plains (NGP) is a geographic area spanning five northern states (MT, WY, ND, SD and NE) and two Canadian provinces (Saskatchewan and Alberta). Experts identify the boundaries as including anywhere between 110 and 235 million acres. This vast area is characterized by semi-arid rolling plains with occasional buttes or badlands. The primary habitats are native grasslands, with isolated wetlands, rivers and woodlands. Most of the native grasslands are mixed- and short- grass prairie, with extensive areas of shrub steppe. Mixed grass prairie consists predominantly of two cool-season grasses – wheatgrasses (Agropyron) and needlegrasses (Stipa) – and two warm-season grasses – blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis) and buffalograss (Bouteloua dactyloides). A pasture with both cool- and warm-season grasses will have a longer season of green vegetation than if only one of these classes is present. Cool-season grasses green-up earlier in the year and later in the fall. Warm- season grasses have the ability to use soil moisture more efficiently and can often withstand drought conditions and grow more during midsummer. Both types provide Fig. 1: The Northern Great Plains (NGP) boundary as identified in the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s NGP Business Plan. different levels of vegetative structure important within a grassland ecosystem. Flowering plants incorporated into this tallgrass prairie. Photo by Justin Meissen Rolling hills of the northern shortgrass prairie. (Flickr Creative Photo by Justin Meissen (Flickr Creative Commons) Commons) Sharing Your Land with Northern Prairie Birds 2 Bird Conservancy of the Rockies Northern Great Plains Ecology and Land Usage Ecology (continued) For the larger Great Plains landscape, studies suggest The grassland ecosystem has been shaped over the the effects of fire often depend upon season of burning last five-thousand years by the interactive effects and occurrence or frequency of past fires. Historically, of disturbances like climate, grazing and fire. The fires on the NGP were highly variable resulting in variability in the amount and seasonal distribution of continual shifts in the abundance and distribution of precipitation from year to year is the driving climatic individual species, primary productivity, and plant and factor for the area. Moisture is positively correlated animal species richness and diversity. Because of the with the production of native vegetation. Droughts are historical interactions of fire, grazing and climate, prairie not uncommon, however, and vegetation growth is wildlife had access to a mosaic of vegetation with variable from year to year. Total snowfall amounts varies different structural and functional attributes. As such, the between 20 and 40 inches (< E of the total annual Northern Great Plains is home to nearly 1,600 plant precipitation). Most (60– 80 percent) precipitation falls species, 260 breeding birds, and 95 mammals. during the growing season, from April to September. The region also experiences very high summer Land Usage temperatures (avg. = 80 – 92° F) and very low winter Today, land ownership in the NGP is mostly private temperatures (avg. = -2 –12° F). As a general rule, with significant ownership in some areas by Tribal and precipitation and relative humidity decrease going from federal agencies and with smaller, more fragmented east to west; air temperature increases from north to areas owned by state agencies. Most private landowners south. Soils and topographic factors will also affect plant plow and plant crops and run cattle on the prairie. composition. Lowland, moist habitats favor cool-season Generally, highly productive land is used for intensive species and the upland dry habitats accomodate the cropping and less productive land is used for grazing. warm-season species. Landowners are deeply connected with the prairie and, for some, have instilled a tradition of careful and effective management of the land (stewardship), a necessity in a dry region where so little vegetation grows. In more recent history, landowners are faced with constant changes in markets, technology advances, and political shuffling that influence land management decisions. Although the region has experienced little Prairie dog town at Theodore Roosevelt National Park. urbanization, challenges exist to sustaining natural Photo by Jasperdo (Flickr Creative Commons; cropped for size) habitats, including conversion of native grassland to cropland, fire suppression, altered/unsustainable Before widespread settlement by European-Americans, grazing, mineral and energy development, invasive a major grazing force came from the expanding, species and climate change. Potential consequences to contracting and shifting prairie dog colonies. Herds these threats may include compromised water quality, of bison, pronghorn and elk wandered widely but at wildlife habitat loss/fragmentation, and decreased times concentrated in small areas, so the impact of their carbon sequestration and soil stabilization, which grazing and trampling was spread unevenly over the ultimately lead to a degraded environment for humans. landscape. The result of such animal activities was that, at any given time, some areas were grazed intensively Because birds are important indicators of habitat quality and others not at all, creating a diversity of grassland and landscape health, they can be useful for assessing habitat conditions across the landscape. conditions on the ground. 3 Sharing Your Land with Northern Prairie Birds Bird Conservancy of the Rockies Bird Conservation Why Birds Matter For landscapes that require management of multiple Birds provide critical ecological services to the world resources, management plans should balance both the including insect control, seed dispersal, and serving as needs of people (i.e., food and fiber) and ecological prey for a diversity of wildlife species. Birds also play an services (i.e., recreation, clean water, and wildlife economic role, as bird-watching and hunting generates habitat) to sustain natural ecological systems. Public billions of dollars in tax revenues. All over the world, land management agencies are tasked with managing however, various factors have contributed to the the land for multiple uses. Private landowners are also degradation, fragmentation, and loss
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