Female Greater Prairie‐Chicken response to energy development and rangeland management

Abstract

Wildlife habitat use is the result of behaviors that occur at multiple spatial and temporal scales. The interactions between these behaviors can often result in complex patterns of selection that can make it challenging to select the most appropriate scale to implement management actions. Greater Prairie‐Chickens (Tympanuchus cupido), a declining grassland grouse species, face many conservation challenges throughout its distribution, including increased fragmentation from anthropogenic activities (e.g., energy development and altered disturbance regimes). However, much of the literature on this species has focused on a narrow portion of its lifecycle, specifically the breeding season. We examined habitat use of female Greater Prairie‐Chickens in a grassland that is managed with prescribed fire and grazing and that has also undergone considerable development for oil and gas production. We developed discrete choice models for four behaviorally distinct life‐history stages and two spatial scales to evaluate how rangeland management, energy development, and scale influence habitat use throughout the annual cycle. Additionally, we used cumulative distribution functions to determine response distances to landscape features. We found that time since fire, proximity to woodlands and proximity of lek sites were the most consistent predictors of habitat use during most periods and spatial scales. Greater Prairie‐Chickens consistently avoided woodlands and remained relatively close to lek sites during all parts of the year. Selection of time since fire varied through the year with Greater Prairie‐Chickens primarily using unburned patches in the lekking and nesting season and recently burned patches in the post‐nesting and nonbreeding season. Greater Prairie‐Chickens demonstrated a seasonally variable response to energy development, avoiding power lines and areas with a high densities of oil wells by as much as 300–600 m in the lekking, post‐nesting, and nonbreeding season. Management actions that promote vegetation heterogeneity will benefit Greater Prairie‐Chickens by creating a variety of seral stages used during different life stages, but efforts should be made to limit future fragmentation of grasslands by energy development.

Why did the chicken not cross the road? Anthropogenic development influences the movement of a grassland bird

“…In addition to the anthropogenic development variables (described in next paragraph), we used a consistent base model for all iSSA models that included variables that we expected to have influenced prairie‐chicken movement and selection decisions independent of development (Table 1). We selected environmental and habitat variables based on previous publications describing prairie‐chicken habitat selection (Londe et al, 2019; Winder et al, 2015), and we selected movement variables based on recommendations from Avgar et al (2016). For the habitat and environmental variables in the base model we included distance to woodlands and lek site, as prairie‐chickens have been shown to consistently avoid trees throughout their entire annual cycle while generally remaining close to the location of the lek where they were captured (Londe et al, 2019; Winder et al, 2015).…”

“…We defined the post-nesting season as the period after a female concluded nesting activity for the year (typically late May to early June) until 14 September when the last broods are likely to have broken up, prior to the fall/winter season. The start of the post-nesting period was determined separately for each individual based on when individual females were observed leaving the nest site (Londe et al, 2019). This period corresponds to the time when females are either raising newly hatched chicks or are recovering from previous reproductive efforts.…”

“…Due to a lack of data about brood presence and survival in the early parts of our study, we combined data for all females during this period, regardless of reproductive status. Previous studies have suggested that habitat selection patterns are likely to be similar between brooding and non-brooding female prairiechickens (Londe et al, 2019;. The non-breeding season was defined as the period from 15 September to 15 March of the subsequent year.…”

“…To do this we used a case–control design to evaluate rates of crossing in observed prairie‐chicken movement paths compared with randomized movement paths. We focused our analysis on the summer post‐nesting and winter non‐breeding seasons, because previous research had shown these periods were when prairie‐chickens were the most sensitive to development (Londe et al, 2019), and because prairie‐chicken space use is not constrained to specific locations, as is the case in the nesting and lekking (communal courtship display) periods.…”

Weather Influences Multiple Components of Greater Prairie‐Chicken Reproduction

“…Nest site selection.-We calculated the number of nests that occurred in each time since fire category to provide a course index of habitat selection during our study. Additional details about nest site selection at our study site can be found in Hovick et al (2014Hovick et al ( , 2015 and Londe et al (2019).…”