At the Jasper County Prairie Chicken Sanctuary, which is a little over 200 miles south of Chicago, 20 miles southeast of Effingham, and just northeast of the tiny town of Bogota, in the former redtop farming capital of the world, Scott Simpson is trying to save the last of Illinois’ prairie chickens. Prairie chickens are a fussy species, and that makes the effort to save them a matter of some subtlety. For Simpson, the manager of the sanctuary, it’s a full-time job.
At that time there were less than 200 prairie chickens remaining in Illinois, the latest milestone in a century-long saga of decline. Simpson recited more numbers to me early on the morning of April 1, as we waited in the ecology lab for the dawn. In 1912, he said, 92 of the 102 counties in Illinois still had prairie chicken populations. By 1962, the total population had dropped to some 2,000 birds, concentrated in south central Illinois. By the spring of 1989, there were less than 100 birds left.
Prairie chicken habitat shrank precipitously. Beginning in 1936, Ralph Yeatter of the Illinois Natural History Survey conducted a yearly census of chickens on a tract of land roughly 15 miles northeast of the present-day Jasper County sanctuary. He based his census on the number of breeding males, a figure easy to establish. Their numbers fluctuated widely, but there was no mistaking the general trend: 76 in 1935, 131 in 1939, 90 in 1946, 46 in 1953, 30 in 1960, 4 in 1963. Yeatter wrote, “After the war, the amount of relatively safe nesting cover on and near the study area was manifestly too limited to maintain the relatively high prairie chicken population of the early years of the study period. Since 1946, the population trend . . . has resembled a holding operation, with populations dropping to lower and lower plateaus, apparently indicative both of a generally deteriorating farm environment and of temporary adjustments of the prairie chickens on and near the study area to the available nest-brood cover.” In the spring of 1968, the annual census found only a single prairie chicken in the area, and it was not seen again.
Eliza Farnham, a New Yorker, moved to Tazewell County, Illinois, in 1836 and lived for four and a half years on the prairie, writing a partly fictionalized book about her experiences called Life in Prairie Land. (She would later write Woman and Her Era, thus becoming a pioneer feminist in at least two senses.) She wrote of the prairie chicken: “He is a large, mottled grey bird, with a heavy ruff of feathers running over his head, which adds much to the watchfulness and timidity of his appearance. Their nests are built on the open prairie in some thick knot of grass. This bird has no proper song, and is in general a very silent inhabitant of these vast plains. When hunted or overtaken by the traveler, they rise suddenly with a whirr, somewhat similar to, but not so distinct as that of the pheasant, and fly very rapidly. If not disturbed they describe the half of an ellipse between the points of rising and alighting. The strokes of the wing are short and rapid, and the flight is very swift and direct. These fowls are rarely heard to utter any noise except at one chosen hour of the day. On a spring morning before sunrise, if you are in the vicinity where grove and prairie meet, the air resounds with a peculiar noise, between the whistle of the quail and the hoarse blowing of the night-hawk, but louder than either. You inquire what it is, and are told it is the prairie cocks greeting the opening day.”
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The booming of prairie chickens can be heard a long way off–something that makes Simpson’s job easier, because he can figure out how many breeding males there are on the Jasper County sanctuary by driving along the grid of section roads, spaced one mile apart, stopping periodically, and listening. That tells him how many booming grounds are in use–this year, there were two. Then by counting how many males are booming, he can estimate the total population.
No more birds appeared before us, and Simpson was getting worried. During the week before, there had been four or five males on the booming ground, but now it seemed there might not be more than one or two. The small number of birds meant, he said, that they might forgo their highly ritualized territorial displays. “We’ve got such a small booming ground that the system may be breaking down,” he said. “At one time we had 65 males here. Now we’re down to four or five. Normally on a typical booming ground you’d have about 15 males, but there’s not even 15 males in the county now. It’s kind of depressing.”
