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

Habitat loss and fragmentation are a growing threat to wildlife and a better understanding of these landscape processes is needed to mitigate their effects on species’ populations. Grassland biomes are among the most imperiled ecosystems in the world and grassland birds are experiencing significant population declines in North America. Understanding how species respond to differences in resource availabilities across spatiotemporal extents is critical to determining animals’ distribution. Here, we assessed how landscape factors relate to spatiotemporal distribution of a grassland bird, ring-necked pheasants (Phasianus colchicus), which have experienced population declines in the Midwest, USA. Pheasant declines have been attributed to habitat loss and fragmentation. We considered the effects of habitat fragmentation (landscape composition and configuration) on the ranging behavior and resource selection of pheasants. We used a 95% fixed kernel estimator to measure home range size and identify scales at which important factors influenced home range sizes. We quantified landscape features within radii of 250 m, 500 m, and 1000 m from the home range center. We also used resource selection functions to predict the seasonal distribution of pheasants during winter, pre-nesting, and nesting at 2^nd- and 3^rd-order selection scales. Through our process, we developed multi-scale predictions of pheasant resource selection and identified wetlands, grassland, conservation reserve program grasslands (CRP), and small grains as landcover types used by pheasants to fulfill their life requirements. At the local scale CRP, wetland, and grassland were the strongest predictors of where pheasants selected their home ranges. Within their home ranges, pheasants increasingly used CRP at a broader scale. Our results also demonstrated pheasants’ positive response to grassland connectivity and negative response to the number of row crop patches in the landscape. Maintaining habitat heterogeneity, by managing habitats such as landscapes composed of a high proportion of grasslands surrounded by small grains and wetlands, could enhance the benefits of local management practices. Collectively, insights obtained from our study can advance habitat conservation efforts for grassland birds and consequently are of broad utility to biologists and wildlife managers.