🎉🎉 It’s here!! 🎉🎉 Last Friday I promised a thread on prairie dogs & grassland birds! Well, here’s the thread you never knew you always wanted!

Buckle up for an intro to why I’m researching prairie dogs & grassland birds! RT if you enjoy! #ornithology #conservation
First, 2 disclaimers:

1) way more comfortable w/ in-person #scicomm so can clarify anything after!

2) thread based on what I’ve read *so far* in reviewing literature; I know lots about birds & conservation, but I am not (yet) an expert on this specific system.

Ok, let’s go!
So why study grassland birds + prairie dogs? Why should we care about either of them, let alone how they interact with each other?

Here’s a basic background & why it matters. Thread: (1/n)
Temperate grasslands are one of the world’s most endangered ecosystems! They occupy 8% of Earth but have least protection of any terrestrial biome (4%)

(2/n) 📷 Carbutt et al (2017)
In North America, grassland birds are declining fastest out of all bird habitat groups😱 😬 We need urgent conservation to save them! Net abundance loss since ‘70 below

(3/n) 📷 Rosenberg et al (2019)
Many reasons for decline inc pesticides & climate change, but #1 = habitat loss via plowing up prairie for agriculture & development. Turns native grassland (L) to monoculture row crops (R). We gotta protect habitat at end of day

(4/n) 📷 Google Maps
But many conservation issues even w/in remaining prairie! American colonization replaced bison w/ cattle, killed off predators, & dispossessed Native land stewards

How to recover from this? We need active #restoration & #conservation management! (5/n)

📷 Wikipedia & NBC
Restoration so far has focused on returning bison and burning on prairies

Both change habitat & maintain a patchwork of different habitat types to maximize native diversity. Super valuable! (6/n)

📷 Knopf & Samson (1996) & TNC
Very long way 2 go still w/ bison & fire. But they‘re known as vital, while the 3rd keystone disturbance force is sadly maligned & unprotected across the Great Plains

Enter Prairie Dogs!! 🎉🎉 Their burrowing + grazing has a uniquely powerful effect on the prairie! (7/n)
So strong that prairie dogs are a landscape-level force that show up on satellite images! Tan/light brown = PD towns among brown prairie & thin green riparian corridors

@AndyJBoyce can tell you Long-billed Curlews love to breed here!

(8/n) 📷 Google Maps
Core question: how do prairie dogs interact w grassland birds? We know they create open-ground habitat 4 birds like Mountain Plover

But do they have a bigger impact? 🔑 stone sp have many indirect yet valuable effects. Can they boost breeding success 4 nearby birds? How? (9/n)
Like birds & bison, prairie dogs need conservation help too. They occupy just 2% of the their former range!

They have no protections & are often poisoned en masse for perceived competition w/ cattle. Also decimated by introduced sylvactic plague. Long way 2 go 😰 (10/n)
Big picture: can we create a win-win by restoring prairie dogs & conserving grassland birds at the same time?

To answer that, we need to understand drivers of bird associations with PDs & how birds respond to PD effects. So let’s go find out! (11/n)
Reminder: my research takes place @americanprairie with @DocHPJones @NIU + @AndyJBoyce @NationalZoo it’s an awesome place w/ ambitious conservation vision. Glad to be working where science informs management! (12/n)
Importantly, MT is occupied indigenous territory. APR partners w/ Nakoda & Aaniiih on Ft Belknap Rez.

Couldn’t this year due to CV-19, but hope to engage & involve local Native community. Conservation & social justice are mutually inseparable (13/n) https://www.americanprairie.org/tribal-communities
Hope to do some more explainers on different aspects of birds, prairie dogs, and grasslands as I make more progress! We have only scratched the surface but this is important context for future threads. Any questions for me?
Oh, and cite your sources, y’all. If you aren’t an academic & want PDFs of any of these articles, you can email the authors for them!

Citations:

2 Henwood et al 2010
3 Rosenberg et al 2019
6 Knopf & Samson 1996
7, 9, & 10 Hoogland 2006
You can follow @Dreelin4birds.
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