Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program: Wisconsin Wildlife
Education, Research and Technical Assistance for Managing Our Natural Resources

Wisconsin Wildlife Project


Landscape-scale management of grassland birds in Wisconsin

July 2009 - April 2022


Personnel

Participating Agencies

  • U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
  • Science Support Partnership
  • Region 3 Migratory Birds
  • Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Science Services

It is widely recognized that grassland obligate birds are declining faster than any other bird community in the Upper Midwest. Recently, conservation delivery has changed from focusing on individual sites at the local scale to focusing on landscape-scale conservation areas. This project is a collaboration across the USGS Wisconsin Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit, US Fish and Wildlife Service, and state natural resource managers in the Midwest. State-level densities will be estimated for a suite of grassland birds in the Midwest and then used to evaluate the importance of current landscape-scale conservation areas in Wisconsin for grassland bird populations.

Research Publications Publication Date
Ribic, C. A., M. J. Guzy, T. A. Anderson, D. W. Sample, and J. L. Nack. 2012. Bird productivity and nest predation in agricultural grasslands. Studies in Avian Biology 43: 119-134. November 2012
Guttery, M.R., C.A. Ribic, D. Sample, A. Paulios, C. Trosen, J. Dadisman, D. Schneider, and J.A. Horton. 2017. Scale-specific habitat relationships influence patch occupancy: defining neighborhoods to optimize the effectiveness of landscape-scale grassland bird conservation. Landscape Ecology 32:515-529 April 2017
Byers, C.M., C. A. Ribic, D. W. Sample., J.D. Dadisman, and M. R. Guttery. 2017. Grassland bird productivity in warm season grass fields in southwest Wisconsin. American Midland Naturalist 178:47-63. November 2017
Theses and Dissertations Publication Date
Byers, Jr., BJ. 2017. Avian response to fall biomass harvest on the Leopold Wetland Management District, Wisconsin. M.S. Thesis, University of Wisconsin, Madison. August 2017
Byers, Carolyn M. 2013. Grassland bird use of warm season grass fields in southwest Wisconsin. M.S. thesis, University of Wisconsin-Madison. August 2013
Byers, C. M. 2013. Grassland bird use of warm season grass fields in Southwest Wisconsin. M.S. thesis, University of Wisconsin, Madison. August 2013
Asper, S. 2017. Report: Grassland bird species abundance on grazed and non-grazed land at Buena Vista Wildlife Area, WI. M.S.(Agroecology), University of Wisconsin, Madison. August 2017