From songbirds to swift fox, FWP inventories non-game species
by Andrew McKean, FWP Region 6 Information Officer
Above the drone of mosquitoes and the whisper of wind in the cottonwoods, Joanne Stewart hears a distinct three-note bird call rising from a screen of willows along the Missouri River. She records the sound in her notebook and cocks her head toward the staccato cu-cu-cu of the song.
“There it is again!” she exclaims. “Hear how its notes sound alike, then a pause then a series of notes again? That’s a black-billed cuckoo. We have been wondering why we hadn’t found one, and now we have, or at least we’ve heard one.”
Moments later Stewart raises her binoculars to identify a bird perched in a Russian olive tree – it’s a clay-colored sparrow she later tells me – then records another half-dozen bird songs before her wristwatch alarm joins the chorus of chirps, calls, screams and warbles volunteered by the birds all around us. The 10-minute listening survey is over at this spot.
Stewart leads the way back to the boat shoved up on shore and we nose into the Missouri River current and motor upstream to our next bird-listening site. We’ll visit 11 separate properties between sunrise at Wolf Point and noon just below Fort Peck Dam, and Stewart will document a total of 352 bird songs or sightings in this 50-mile corridor. It’s her third visit to these sites this summer, and she has a final visit scheduled for later this month.
Under her mosquito net and packer hat, Stewart looks like a jungle explorer, and indeed, the lush vegetation, cacophony of birds and buzz of bugs along the Missouri seems tropical. Stewart is a conservation technician for Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks, and one of her jobs this summer is to inventory songbirds along the Missouri River from Fort Peck Dam to the North Dakota border. Some, like the black-billed cuckoo, an endangered least tern and a maroon-breasted orchard oriole she spotted near the mouth of Prairie Elk Creek, are rare finds along the Missouri River in Montana. Others, such as meadowlarks, doves and red-tailed hawks, are familiar residents of this reach of river.
The work Stewart is doing is classic biological data collection – establishing baseline information on bird populations by observing individual animals at specific locations over time – but in some ways her work is revolutionary.
For starters, before an initial assessment last year, no one had rigorously examined songbird populations along this remote reach of river. Stewart’s work this summer, and follow-up surveys in future years that can illuminate trends in populations, may expand the known range of some bird species or reveal declines in other species.
But what is even more remarkable is who Stewart works for, and how her project is funded.
State Wildlife Grants
Many of Montana’s most familiar wildlife species are those that are pursued by hunters and anglers. Elk, pheasants, deer, trout, perch, geese and antelope are abundant in Montana largely because sportsmen themselves fund the management of these animals. Hunting and fishing license dollars pay biologists’ wages and costs to survey elk and walleye populations, for example, and Fish, Wildlife & Parks tries to ensure sustainable populations with enough surplus animals to allow hunting and angling opportunities.
But what about Montana’s non-game species, animals that aren’t hunted or fished and don’t have advocates that fund their management? Historically, animals such as leopard frogs, yellow warblers and brassy minnows have existed beneath the scrutiny of game agencies. Many of these non-game species didn’t get much attention until their populations declined so far that they were declared threatened or endangered species and federal intervention mandated habitat protection and other conservation measures.
In some cases, an endangered-species listing could have been avoided if biologists had known of a species’ population decline earlier, says Ryan Rauscher, a FWP native-species biologist based in Glasgow. In those instances, agencies might have taken steps to reverse the decline.
“In my own career, I have seen several species – ferruginous hawks, mountain plovers, pygmy rabbits – removed from the (federal threatened or endangered) candidate species list because we had enough baseline data to document population trends,” says Rauscher.
Keeping common species common
Management of these non-game species falls under Fish, Wildlife & Parks’ mission to “provide for the stewardship of the fish, wildlife, parks and recreational resources of Montana,” says Rauscher. That stewardship doesn’t end with animals that wear antlers and can be hunted.
“If we’re responsible for managing these animals, we need to know what is out there and where it lives,” adds Stewart. “Ultimately, it’s our job to keep common species common and to define where rare species live. In some cases, we may find that uncommon species are actually more abundant than anyone previously thought.”
Funding the management of these non-game species, however, is problematic because according to state and federal guidelines, hunting and angling license dollars must be spent largely on management of game species. “And rightly so,” says Rauscher. “Hunters and anglers have paid for most wildlife restoration in Montana, and it’s inappropriate to ask them to fund management of non-game species.”
A federal program, known as the State Wildlife Grants program, has started to pick up the slack, funding conservation programs for species in greatest conservation need, the majority of which are non-game species. It’s that source that funds Stewart’s Missouri River songbird survey along with dozens of other projects statewide. In Region 6 alone, crews this summer are inventorying prairie minnows, conducting a native-fish creel survey on the Missouri River above Fort Peck Lake, trapping softshelled turtles along the Missouri River, monitoring waterbirds and shorebirds around prairie potholes, assessing small-mammal distribution, and surveying species as varied as sedge wrens, yellow rails, Nelson’s sharptail sparrows and LeCont’s sparrows. The federal money – Montana will get about $1 million this year – is also being used to monitor sage grouse and swift fox populations in eastern Montana.
Funding for these State Wildlife Grants (or SwiG projects, as they’re popularly called), which ultimately comes from a federal tax on offshore oil and gas revenue, has been provided for the past couple of years on a competitive basis, which means that Rauscher has had to apply in the fall for projects that may – or may not – be funded the following spring. The federal funds may be available in the future (see sidebar) if FWP completes a plan that details which species are in most need of management.
Back on the river, Stewart logs the orchard oriole’s presence in her field notes.
“This is one of the really exciting parts of this survey,” she says. “No one has documented this bird breeding this far west in Montana. This is why we’re doing the survey, to document these various animals that people may see every day but not recognize.”
SIDEBAR
July 13 meeting will detail fish and wildlife assessment
Fish, Wildlife & Parks invites the public to review a massive assessment of Montana’s fish and wildlife species and their distribution.
The only meeting in north-central or northeastern Montana to review the state’s Comprehensive Fish and Wildlife Conservation Strategy will be held Wednesday, July 13 from 7 to 9 p.m. in Fish, Wildlife & Parks’ Quonset meeting room. The room is located just north of FWP’s Region 6 headquarters on Highway 2 West in Glasgow.
The public is encouraged to review the document and comment on its accuracy and completeness.
After collecting public input at meetings across the state this summer, the assessment will be submitted to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service for approval, and eventual funding. Call FWP in Glasgow at 228-3700 for more information on the Region 6 meeting. You can also review the assessment on FWP’s web site at www.fwp.mt.gov.
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