Vinyl Siding for Prairie Chickens

Did the title of this post make you wonder for a moment? I hope so. Sounds pretty weird, doesn't it? But it's true. Let me explain.

Out on the wide-open expanses of the Oklahoma prairie (and in a few nearby states) the lesser prairie chicken is holding onto its existence, barely. But the species' population is a fraction of what it once was. Prairie chickens were once so abundant that they fed pioneer families for entire seasons. Market hunters shot them until the hunters' arms were too sore to shoot anymore. And over the last two centuries, the species has decline significantly from hunting pressure, but more recently as a result of habitat loss and habitat alteration.

Native short-grass prairie is the specific habitat that the lesser prairie chicken prefers. Plow it up for wheat or soybeans or any other crop and the chickens have to go elsewhere. When trees naturally seed and grow up tall enough to cast a shadow, the chickens, feeling the trees might be ideal for a perching or hiding predator, go elsewhere. Plop down an oil derrick or a line of wind turbines—same result: move along LPCs.

All of these factors have contributed to the decline of this very special prairie species. But lurking just above ground level was another culprit in the lesser prairie chicken's decimation: barbed wire. Researchers in the field had discovered what farm hands and ranchers had known for a long time: prairie chickens often fly just above ground level, and because they often fly in to lekking grounds well before daylight, this flying style made them especially prone to colliding with barbed wire fence. The fence is essentially invisible in low light: rusty wire against sere-brown grass.

That's where the vinyl siding comes in. Field researchers looking for a way to reduce fence-chicken collisions landed on a seemingly ingenious solution. Small, three-to-four-inch sections of vinyl siding, with its interlocking channels, snapped perfectly into place on strands of barbed wire. The white hunks of hard vinyl fluttered slightly in the prairie wind, but held fast to the wire. Unlike pieces of white flagging, the vinyl siding lasted through the intense hot and cold and high winds of the Oklahoma seasons. Best, though, they made the wire fence strands visible to flying lesser prairie chickens, even in low light conditions.

My reason for being in Oklahoma was to deliver a keynote talk to the Lesser Prairie Chicken Festival in Woodward, Oklahoma. This festival offers the expected field trips to temporary viewing blinds set up adjacent to known display leks so attendees can see the chickens in action. Since the LPC was a life bird for me, I was excited to make the trip to Woodward. But the festival also offers something that I found to be even more meaningful—a chance to do something to actually help the lesser prairie chicken: by placing strips of vinyl siding on barbed wire fences in habitat adjacent to known lesser prairie chicken habitat.

One of the prairie chicken experts I got to meet in Oklahoma was Dr. Dwayne Elmore (above). He knew the location of most of the active LPC leks in the area.


We met a guy from the Oklahoma Department of Natural Resources who selected a section of fence for us to mark. He demonstrated how to mark the fence for the chickens, pointed to several large burlap sacks of cut-up vinyl siding, then pointed to a long stretch of as yet unmarked barbed-wire (locals call it "bobwire") fence.


We set to work.
The idea was to stagger the siding pieces every two feet or so on the top two strands of wire. This seems to be the most effective use of this collision deterrent, since it's right at the height at which LPCs do much of their flying at dawn and dusk.

Here's a piece of vinyl siding snapped into place. The channels in the siding are just the right size to snap down over a strand of wire, between the barbs/bobs.


As you can see, the white siding pieces present a visual image that's easy to notice.

After the fence was marked and we ran out of siding pieces, we felt a real sense of accomplishment. Here's hoping the fence-marking program results in greatly lower mortality from fence strikes, which could in turn mean more chickens dancing on the prairie.

I've got at least a couple more posts in mind about this wonderful part of the world and the great birds and people there. I'll try to get back for a BOTB visit to the big wide open of Oklahoma sometime soon.