​Offered on Tuesday, January 26, 2021
Species of Greatest Conservation Need; and Research and Evaluation

Species of Greatest Conservation Need

Please refer to videos 1, 2, 3 and 4 below. 

Grassland species are of priority for multi-regional conservation efforts in the Mississippi Flyway according to the states’ Wildlife Action Plans, making up 16% of SGCN in nine states that breakout species by habitat types, and, according to the Southeastern Grasslands Initiative, nearly 1/3 of all rare Southeastern land vertebrates require or prefer grasslands; 2/3 of all rare plants in the Southeast require or prefer grasslands; 60% of the nearly 6,000 native plant species of the Southeast require or prefer grasslands; and greater than 600 of the 1,213 rare habitats of the Southeast are rare grassland types. The dramatic decline of grassland birds in the U.S. also has been well documented, both in the 2019 State of the Birds report (https://www.stateofthebirds.org/2019) and in a recent paper published in Science (Rosenberg et al. 2019) indicating a greater than 50% loss of abundance of grassland birds since 1970, the greatest among all taxonomic groups and biomes in the report. State of Canada’s Birds reported a 57% loss of grassland birds as well (http://nabci.net/resources/state-of-canadas-birds-2019). However, a lack of information about how the status of populations vary within and across the flyway can cause inconsistencies in how and whether species are classified with regards to conservation need.  

​Research and Evaluation 

Please refer to videos 3 and 4 below. 

How populations exist in space is key to understanding population dynamics, and how species use space varies depending on their natural history strategies. The spatial heterogeneity of grasslands in the flyway today is a product of how humans have altered the land and landscapes in the centuries since widespread European immigration, and the current distribution and abundance of grassland-affiliated species throughout the flyway is a response to that change.  

Videos for Review

Video #1: Grassland SGCN of the Mississippi Flyway
​Kelly Rezac, Missouri Department of Conservation

Video #2: Influence of the CRP and National-Scale Scale Coordinated Management on Northern Bobwhite
John Yeiser, University of Georgia

Video #3: Spatial Structure Considerations for Conserving Grassland Species of Conservation Concern
Christine Ribic, U.S. Geological Survey, Wisconsin Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Video #4: Southern Mississippi Flyway JV Partnerships' Grassland Initiative: a Multi-Joint Venture effort to model full annual cycle population-habitat relationships of grassland birds. 
Jim Giocomo: American Bird Conservancy and Oaks & Prairies JV, Thomas Bonnot: University of Missouri, Cara Joos: American Bird Conservancy and Central Hardwoods JV