After a two day summit in Calgary, Canadian and American scientists called for immediate government action to save the sage grouse.
Only 13 males remain in Alberta, and 35 in Saskatchewan. “Without immediate and effective action, we will surely lose this bird, a sentinel for the health of the Great Plains ecosystem,” they said.
These charismatic birds, who have survived for centuries on the prairies, have run smack up against the oil industry. Measures recommended to save them include the removal of oil & gas wells from critical habitat, as well as the removal of telephone posts, fences and buildings that are used as roosts by avian predators.
Removal of oil & gas wells from resource-rich Alberta? In an alternate universe maybe.
Those telephone posts and fences they want removed are actively used by many raptors to hunt ground squirrels and mice. One of the things already contributing to the threatened status of the ferruginous hawk is a lack of roosting sites. All raptors use those posts to spot prey before swooping down to catch it.
Not to mention the people living in those areas need those fence posts and telephone poles. What they are calling for is a complete restoration of the grasslands to the pre-settlement conditions of the 1800’s, which anyone with a grain of logic can see is not going to happen on this large scale.
Conservation groups in Alberta have now launched a sage grouse awareness campaign, including billboards along the highways and in major cities. The campaign will hopefully get more people thinking about our disappearing grasslands, and that’s always a good thing.
I’m just not sure focusing on a species that is already below the requirements for a healthy gene pool is the way to do it. The time to save the sage grouse in Alberta is long past, and the government should have acted years ago.
The sage grouse will serve as a reminder of how quietly a species can disappear. “It will be the first case where the oil and gas industry has caused the extirpation of a species in Canada,” said Mark Boyce of the University of Alberta. Experts say the birds could disappear from Canada within two years.
There is no doubt the grasslands in Canada need protecting, and increasing sage grouse habitat would benefit a large number of species. Let’s hope the plight of these birds at least acts as a catalist for increased grassland protection.
The current campaign may even get the provincial government to listen, but I doubt it. They’re already listening to the ‘cha-ching’ of the planned Alberta-Texas Keystone Oil Pipline. When it’s built, it will go right through what little sage grouse habitat is left in this province.
Male greater sage-grouse strut displays on a lek near Hudson, Wyoming USA. During the spring, males gather on breeding grounds, called leks. Males perform strut displays to court females and define their display territories on the lek. The “burp” sounds occur when males inhale or exhale air from their vocal sac (they inflate their esophagus with air, which we see protruding through 2 colorful regions on their chest during display). A few attractive males will mate with almost all of the females who visit the lek, and most males will not mate at all. Females raise the young on their own.
Filmed with a Sony HDR-FX1 HDV Digital Camcorder.
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