{"id":85091,"date":"2020-05-12T05:53:39","date_gmt":"2020-05-12T11:53:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=85091"},"modified":"2020-05-12T06:42:37","modified_gmt":"2020-05-12T12:42:37","slug":"what-happened-to-the-chukars-on-antelope-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/12\/what-happened-to-the-chukars-on-antelope-island\/","title":{"rendered":"What Happened To The Chukars On Antelope Island?"},"content":{"rendered":"

For several years I’ve wanted to know what caused the Chukar population on Antelope Island to crash. Recently State Park Assistant Manager Wendy Wilson provided some answers.<\/p>\n

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For the first eight years of my bird photography career Chukars were ubiquitous on Antelope Island. In the early morning I could hear their distinct calls echoing off the hillsides and seeming to come from every direction and they could be seen feeding or scurrying around in the vegetation almost anywhere. Especially in the spring and early summer they could easily be found calling from elevated perches like boulders and even picnic tables.<\/p>\n

And unlike most Chukars elsewhere that are extremely wild and difficult to approach the birds on the island were somewhat acclimated to vehicles so typically they could be approached and viewed with relative ease.They were a delightful, if introduced, addition to the island’s wildlife.<\/p>\n

But all that changed about four years ago in what seemed like the blink of an eye. Suddenly they just weren’t there. I could often go many months without seeing or even hearing them a single time. In at least one year I don’t believe I photographed a single Chukar and I was far from the only person who noticed their precipitous decline. I’m unaware of any local bird or wildlife photographers who didn’t notice the same thing.<\/p>\n

For four years now I’ve wanted to know why they essentially vanished. I had my suspicions but I knew nothing concrete until about a week ago when I had a short but very pleasant visit with Antelope Island State Park Assistant Manager Wendy Wilson. When I asked her what happened to the Chukars she said they believe they know the reason for their decline.<\/p>\n

Wendy said the most likely culprit was fire.<\/p>\n

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In July of 2016 a particularly nasty lightning-caused and wind-driven wildfire consumed almost exactly half of the island’s 28,000 acres. I was among the first to drive the East Road early on the morning they reopened it after the fire. For this photo I was on the causeway at dawn and approaching the island from the east so we can easily see the extent of the fire scar covering about half of the island.<\/p>\n

When this photo was taken fire crews from several western states were still mopping up hotspots.<\/p>\n

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Thankfully large mammals like these bison were able to escape the fire by moving north and east in front of the flames but it was close. On the morning these photos were taken Park Manager Jeremy Shaw told me that at times the wind-driven 6-8′ flames were moving north at about 25 mph.<\/p>\n

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Mostly the fire burned the steeper rocky terrains of the island and avoided the flatter grasslands closer to the lake shore but that was particularly bad news for Chukars. The preferred habitat of Chukars in the American West is steep rocky mountainous terrain harboring a mixture of brush, grasses and forbs and that’s exactly the habitat where the fire was concentrated.<\/p>\n

When this type of habitat is destroyed, Chukars pay the price.<\/p>\n

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But there’s some good news, finally. After four years of a Chukar drought on the island I’m finally seeing and hearing them once again and in reasonably good numbers too. Wendy told me that others are reporting the same thing. They’re still far from fully recovered but the trend is a positive one.<\/p>\n

I have to wonder if the island’s coyotes didn’t suffer the same consequences from the fire because their numbers have been noticeably down for several years also. I wish I’d asked that question of Wendy but I just didn’t think of it.<\/p>\n

Time will tell I guess but I’m very pleased to finally get a handle on the likely cause of the Chukar decline and I thought some of my readers, especially locals, might be interested too.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

For several years I’ve wanted to know what caused the Chukar population on Antelope Island to crash. Recently State Park Assistant Manager Wendy Wilson provided some answers.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85092,"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":[3,334,352,374,8],"tags":[26,5109,31,5108,82,5110],"class_list":["post-85091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-chukars","category-coyotes","category-ecology-and-environment","tag-alectoris-chukar","tag-antellope-island-wildfire","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-assistant-manager-wendy-wilson","tag-chukar","tag-coyote-decline"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/chukar-0233-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-m8r","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85091","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=85091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}