Lesser prairie-chicken decline concerns biologists

Lesser prairie-chickens (Tympanuchus pallidicinctus) once covered the prairie land of the Great Plains where they were an abundant game bird. In Oklahoma, the lesser prairie-chicken has declined to the point of becoming a state species of special concern, vulnerable to extinction from limited range, low population and other factors. The trend in Oklahoma since the 1980s, according to Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation data, shows a precipitous decline. At a presentation in 2008 on the Selman Ranch, near Woodward, Okla., Dwayne Elmore, an Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service wildlife biologist and assistant professor in the department of natural resource ecology and management at Oklahoma State University, expressed his concern to wildlife biologists: "I like to call them the grassland canary. Because, like a canary in a coalmine, it is the first thing that goes when there is something wrong with the prairie; so, that is why I am really interested--not just to have another species around. The reason we want to keep our eye on them is because they are our early warning indicator that something is seriously wrong with the grasslands."

Source: High Plains Journal, 5/29/08
http://www.hpj.com/archives/2008/jun08/jun2/lesserprairie-chickendeclin…