Land ownership and use influence grassland bird abundance

Abstract

ABSTRACTPopulations of grassland songbirds continue to decline, and grasslands devoted to conservation are rare across the Great Plains. To gain the most value from grasslands for grassland birds, we must understand what types of management benefit these species. We evaluated the relative abundance of grassland birds on ownership types and the association of different land use activities with their abundance. We surveyed a wide range of grasslands (e.g., from idle to heavily managed, from remnant prairie to reconstructed) across western Minnesota and northwestern Iowa, USA, in 2013 and 2014. Sites surveyed covered a gradient of landscape context, management history (fire, grazing, reconstruction), and public and private ownership. We evaluated the influence of ownership and management history on the abundance of 12 species of grassland birds by comparing Akaike's Information Criterion values of linear models that included the variables of interest to models that included only local and landscape habitat factors. Ownership explained additional variation in bird abundance beyond local and landscape variables for 7 of the 12 species, and 5 species were more common on private lands. Fire or grazing history explained variation in bird abundance for 11 species, and 7 species had greater abundance on remnant prairie than on reconstructed grassland. For all but 1 species, ownership and management factors significantly improved models above a base model of local and landscape variables typically used to predict abundance. Our results suggest remnant prairie plays an important role for grassland birds, and that grazing could be a tool to increase abundance of some grassland bird species in the region. Furthermore, tracking management history of public lands in a consistent and accessible way could help improve landscape‐based models for these species. © 2018 The Wildlife Society.