{"id":29676,"date":"2015-02-21T07:08:46","date_gmt":"2015-02-21T14:08:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=29676"},"modified":"2015-02-21T08:07:28","modified_gmt":"2015-02-21T15:07:28","slug":"the-fate-of-the-ferruginous-hawk-and-the-sage-grouse-are-oddly-intertwined","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/02\/21\/the-fate-of-the-ferruginous-hawk-and-the-sage-grouse-are-oddly-intertwined\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fate Of The Ferruginous Hawk And The Sage Grouse Are Oddly Intertwined"},"content":{"rendered":"

Managing species in distress can be a complex and potentially contradictory endeavor.<\/p>\n

Yesterday morning I attended an event hosted by Hawkwatch International (HWI)\u00a0designed to promote their SOAR (Saving Our American Raptors) campaign and I learned some things about raptors and the challenges involved with promoting their healthy populations – among them the fact that choosing strategies that\u00a0benefit a species in trouble may have negative implications for other threatened species.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"ferruginous<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 400, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ferruginous Hawk\u00a0populations are in serious\u00a0decline so this spectacular hawk is high on\u00a0HWI’s list of species needing help.\u00a0Historically Ferruginous Hawks were ground-nesters rather than tree-nesters, usually choosing high points on the ground, presumably to avoid trampling by large mammals like bison.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"ferruginous<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 400, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is a Ferruginous Hawk nest on just such a high point – a group of rocks jutting up from the ground near Montana’s Centennial Valley.\u00a0But these ground nests are atypical these days because Ferruginous Hawks, in reaction to the settlement of the west and its attendant\u00a0development,\u00a0agricultural and recreational practices, have adapted to nesting in low trees and small shrubs in most of their nesting habitat.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"ferruginous<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/800, f\/11, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS USM @ 100mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

At lower left you see a Ferruginous Hawk nest that is now\u00a0more typically located in a small tree\/large bush, also in the Centennial Valley (if you look carefully you can see a single small chick in the nest).\u00a0Most of the Ferrug nests I see are in such locations. At slightly lower elevations many Ferrug nests are located in the juniper\/pinyon forests so common in the American West, including Utah.\u00a0Junipers have greatly expanded their range in response to overgrazing, fire suppression and climate change and they have\u00a0invaded and displaced\u00a0the original, natural\u00a0sagebrush\/grass communities in many areas.<\/p>\n

But in the 1950’s through the 70’s millions of acres of junipers were “chained” in the west in a misguided effort\u00a0(the practice had devastating effects on native plant species in the understory)\u00a0to restore natural habitats.<\/p>\n

And now things really get complicated as you try to maintain nesting habitat for Ferruginous Hawks and at the same time avoid negative consequences for other threatened species.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"sage<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Greater Sage Grouse is so seriously\u00a0threatened that it’s a candidate for listing under the Endangered Species act. The species is\u00a0totally dependent on sagebrush communities and the primary reason for its decline is habitat destruction so efforts to bring it back from the brink include restoration of sagebrush\/grass communities\u00a0at the expense of the junipers\u00a0used\u00a0by nesting Ferruginous Hawks.<\/p>\n

The dichotomy is obvious.\u00a0How do conservation organizations increase sagebrush\/grass communities for Sage Grouse without seriously reducing nesting habitat for Ferruginous Hawks? Without the alteration of the original nesting habits of the hawks (caused by man) it wouldn’t be a problem.<\/p>\n

But it is a problem\u00a0and it isn’t an easy\u00a0one to\u00a0deal with.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Managing species in distress can be a complex and potentially contradictory endeavor.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29677,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,8,377,1558,1493,391],"tags":[555,2426,138,2031,1432,2425,220,230,2424,2423],"class_list":["post-29676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-ecology-and-environment","category-ferruginous-hawks","category-greater-sage-grouse","category-montana-favorite-locations","category-nesting-and-mating","tag-centennial-valley","tag-endangered-species-act","tag-ferruginous-hawk","tag-greater-sage-grouse-3","tag-hawkwatch-international","tag-juniper","tag-montana-2","tag-nesting","tag-saving-our-american-raptors","tag-soar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/ferruginous-hawk-0243-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-7IE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29676\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}