#gallifrom

[typhlonectes]

The Greater Prairie-chicken: playing chicken with extinction            

Despite being over-hunted to the brink of extinction, this flamboyant member of the grouse family may now be starting to recover.

Today, an encounter with a Greater Prairie-chicken Tympanuchus cupido (Vulnerable) is a rare and extraordinary experience. The species used to be a common sight across North America and Canada, numbering in the millions in the 1830s in the state of Illinois alone.

But by the 1930s, this flamboyant member of the grouse family was teetering on the brink of extinction. During the space of a single century, vast swathes of prairie habitat had been swallowed up by farmland, and the species was drastically over-hunted for sport, leaving it hemmed into just a few small patches of managed grassland in the midwestern USA...

Read more: http://www.birdlife.org/worldwide/news/greater-prairie-chicken-playing-chicken-extinction

#prairie #grouse #prairie chicken #bird #gallifrom #birdwatching #ornithology #endangered #conservation #north america #animals #nature