January 2008

TOPIC:  The Greater-Prairie Chicken in Wisconsin

SPEAKER:  Ashly Steinke

WHEN:  Tuesday, January 15

TIME:  7:00 pm Refreshments
TIME:  7:30 pm Program

WHERE:  Auditorium
UW Arboretum

PARKING:  Free parking at the Arboretum

PRE-MEETING DINNER:  You are invited to join Madison Audubon board members and friends at the pre-program dinner with our speaker beginning at 5:15.

Paisan's 131 West Wilson Street

QUESTIONS?:  Please call the MAS office at (608)255-2473.

In a traditional Crow legend, Old Man Coyote made the prairie-chicken to show the other animals how to dance. Before European colonization, the Greater Prairie-Chicken danced every spring in small groups, called leks, from the Atlantic coast to the foot of the Rocky Mountains. Today the greater prairie-chicken is an Audubon Society Red List bird and a state threatened species because it exists as a relatively small statewide population (<1500) separated into 4 nearly isolated populations due to habitat loss and fragmentation.

Wisconsin’s greater-prairie chicken population experienced a population bottleneck in the 1950’s. Efforts to save the bird in Wisconsin have been successful and it is one of the few states where populations are steady, but the small number of birds isolated from other populations has resulted in decreased genetic variation in contemporary populations. Although the hatching success for the Wisconsin population has remained high despite loss of genetic variability, the consensus opinion of a conservation genetics advisory committee assembled in 2005 by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (WDNR) was that birds from other populations should be introduced in Wisconsin populations to ensure the long-term survival of greater-prairie chickens in the state. A joint effort among The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, University of Wisconsin Madison & Milwaukee, University of Minnesota Crookston, Central Wisconsin Grassland Conservation Area Partnership, and Minnesota Department of Natural Resources was created and a translocation project began in 2006 when the Society of Tympanuchus cupido pinnatus Ltd. released an initial 40 greater prairie chicken females from western Minnesota on the Buena Vista Grasslands in central Wisconsin. In summer 2007, an additional 24 greater prairie chicken females were released into central Wisconsin.

Ashly Steinke, A Ph.D. candidate working under the direction of Dr. David Drake at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is evaluating the success of the translocation by measuring survival rates, nesting success, hatching success, and brood survival rates between translocated hens and resident hens. Concurrent research through the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is analyzing the genetic dispersal associated with the translocation.