The Conservancy's Prairie Wings project has mapped the places that need to be preserved to save 13 unlucky birds. Together with government agencies such as the US Forest Service and the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and partnerships like the Playa Lakes Joint Venture, The Nature Conservancy is protecting those large landscapes that are most critical to our declining grassland birds.

Grassland birds were historically found in vast numbers across the prairies of the western Great Plains. Today, the birds of these and other grasslands have shown steeper, more consistent, and more geographically widespread declines than any other group of North American species.

These losses are a direct result of the declining quantity and quality of habitat due to human activities like conversion of native prairie to agriculture, urban development, and suppression of naturally occurring fire. The grasslands are no longer trimmed and trodden by stamping bison and burrowing prairie dogs which, combined with regular fires and irregular rainfall, created a patchwork prairie of blue grama and buffalo grasses that supported these birds and other species. As a result, the Great Plains are generally regarded as the most endangered major ecosystem in North America.

Species Profiles:

Lark Bunting · Baird's Sparrow · Lesser Prairie-Chicken · Sprague's Pipit · Ferruginous Hawk · McCown's Longspur · Scaled Quail · Long-billed Curlew · Cassin's Sparrow · Burrowing Owl · Greater Prairie-Chicken · Mountain Plover · Chestnut-collared Longspur

Map of the Project Area

Prairie Wings Facts

• Some 300 bird species breed in the Great Plains, almost three-quarters of the breeding bird species in the U.S.
• For other birds, the western Great Plains provide important stopover habitat that are crucial for their migrations.
• The shortgrass prairie has been reduced to 40 percent of its historic size, and much of what remains has been degraded by fragmentation and incompatible grazing practices.
• This region stretches across Canada, the U.S. and Mexico and includes three Canadian provinces, 10 U.S. states, 7 Mexican states, and nine ecoregions.

Illustrations by David Allen Sibley from The National Audubon Society: The Sibley Guide to Birds published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York. Copyright © 2000 by Chanticleer Press and David Allen Sibley. No illustrations may be copied, reproduced, or reused without the express written permission of the copyright holders.

Find out how The Nature Conservancy is working to protect migratory birds:

• Study climate change in the Great Plains and its effect on bird populations
• Identify and protect a network of high-quality migration stopover habitats around the Gulf of Mexico
• Conserve migratory birds on the Pacific Coast of North America
• Examine the wintering ecology and habitat requirements of Kirtland's Warbler
• Study the Cerulean Warbler, one of the fastest declining species of migratory bird
• Delve into the Pine-Oak Forests of Central America to conserve this critical habitat for birds
• Investigate bird migration across the United States using Doppler weather radar

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Photos: Greater Prairie Chicken, Photo © Patrick Beauzay; Royal Tern, Morro Strand State Beach, California, USA. Photo © Mike Baird (Creative Commons).