Protect and Enhance the Nations Natural Resource Base and Environment

Grazing Practice Opens Up New Avian Opportunities

Issue (Who cares and why?)
     The general dogma about curlew behavior – a bird listed by USFW as “of concern species” with only an estimated 20,000 remaining worldwide – is an animal that will nest only in wet meadows with short-grass and no shrubs, e.g., prairies. These environmental factors help mitigate the physiological constraints of an extremely long fledgling period, exposing chicks to all sorts of dangers. When compared to Nevada’s common shore birds, the curlew typically requires double the time to fledge (70 days). The USFW states that the major threat to curlews is degradation of their native grassland breeding habitat. However, resent observations have found hundreds of curlews living in Eastern Nevada, a sagebrush community, with little to no water. What has brought these birds to Nevada?

What has been done?
     Over the past 3 years University of Nevada researchers in cooperation with local ranches of the Humboldt and Ruby valleys have developed a grazing strategy that reduces risk of survival in Nevada’s curlew populations. By following a few simple rules: grazing cattle in low-land valley pastures during the fall/winter months, moving the cattle off the pastures for spring/early summer months, using annual snow melt runoff to irrigate pastures and waiting until mid-July to cut a single hay crop, research data shows curlew populations are above average. To gain a better perspective of how these management practices might help curlew populations, University of Nevada scientists conducted annual censuses that determined not only total numbers and nesting success, but how many birds decided to return to Nevada as opposed to some other traditional spring breeding ground.

Impact
      Over the past few years, ranchers along the Humboldt and Ruby valleys with guidance from UNR researchers have begun a management practice that has greatly enhanced Eastern Nevada’s curlew population. A species of bird typically found in the teens can now be found by the hundreds. Site loyalty is proving to be nearly 100% by returning breeding pairs each year. By grazing cattle in the winter and moving them to higher pastures in the spring/summer, flood irrigating with winter runoff, and not cutting the pastures for hay until July, curlew parents are now rearing 100+ chicks per year. These findings are generating heavy interest form USFW officials and environmentalists alike.

Contact
Lewis Oring
Natural Resources and Environmental Science/186
University of Nevada
Reno, Nevada 89557
oring@cabnr.unr.edu