Less than 40 of the historical acreage of north american grasslands remains today

This Cooperative Agreement award from the U.S. Department of the Interior Fish and Wildlife Service under the Migratory Bird Monitoring, Assessment and Conservation program (CFDA 15.655) will fund research by SUL Ross State University to assess the suitability of livestock tanks and ephemeral ponds as habitat for migratory and wintering grassland birds in the Trans-Pecos region of Texas. The $176,785 award will support the use of automated recording units, point counts, and GPS tracking of Long-billed Curlews to evaluate how these water sources and surrounding landscape characteristics impact priority bird species. The results will directly inform management practices in this ecoregion to help conserve declining grassland bird populations. The project will run from September 2023 through September 2026.

Concomitantly, grassland birds have declined precipitously. Species that overwinter in the chihuahuan desert grasslands have declined in abundance by nearly 70 . However, the resources used and needed by these wintering species are not well studied and thus cannot currently be managed to improve these species populations. Although the chihuahuan grasslands are relatively wet compared to other desert ecosystems, water is still a valuable resource. Livestock tanks are one important resource for migratory and wintering birds in the chihuahuan grasslands, especially because precipitation is infrequent during the winter. However, most research on the management of working lands for nonbreeding grassland birds has focused on grazing practices, and little is known about the characteristics of water sources that are most suitable for migrating and wintering birds. Our project will assess the suitability of livestock tanks and ephemeral ponds for migrating and wintering birds in the trans-pecos ecoregion of texas. We will use automated recording units and point counts to evaluate priority species use of livestock tanks and will measure tank characteristics including size, distance to other water sources, and shrub density on the surrounding landscape. We will also deploy GSM transmitters on long-billed curlews (numenius americanus) to document their movements throughout the winter and better understand how different resources in the chihuahuan grasslands are connected. The results of this study will directly inform management practices in the trans-pecos ecoregion.