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9. Managing for Wildlife with Particular Requirements
- University of Iowa Press
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Thus far, chapters in this section have dealt primarily with management strategies aimed at creating and maintaining diverse plant communities. By and large, those strategies will also result in diverse and heterogeneous habitat structure. However, there are ways to pay additional attention to the habitat needs of particular species if they are of interest to you, or in need of special conservation. It’s not that you need to devise a new and different management strategy for these species, but more that you can keep their requirements in mind as you adapt your plant-diversity-oriented management from year to year. And it’s important to remember that you may not have to provide every kind of habitat these species need, especially in landscapes where there are lots of relatively small landholdings together. If you can look over your fences to see what your neighbors are providing in terms of habitat structure, you can often make simple adjustments to your own habitat to provide missing components. Remnant-Dependent Insects There are many ways to categorize insects with regard to their value or need for conservation. For example, Ron Panzer and other biologists in the Chicago area have begun keeping track of insect species that they term “remnantdependent ”—they are found almost exclusively in intact prairies, as opposed prairie management 9. Managing for Wildlife with Particular Requirements 136 prairie management to gardens, fields, tame pastures, or other places. These species are particularly vulnerable to loss of prairie habitat and to the way such habitat is managed, because if they are eliminated from one site, there are very few other sites from which they can recolonize. Leafhoppers and other species that aren’t able to travel long distances are especially likely to be at risk, but the group of remnant-dependent insects includes many others, even mobile species like butterflies. The classification of remnant-dependent insects is most important in the eastern portions of tallgrass prairie where landscape fragmentation is especially severe. Further west, high-quality prairies are more likely to be near other native grasslands, even if those grasslands are relatively degraded. For The Gorgone checkerspot butterfly is classified as a rare and remnant-dependent insect in eastern tallgrass prairies but is more common in the west where habitat fragmentation is less severe. [54.147.102.111] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 10:15 GMT) 137 managing for wildlife with particular requirements at least some insects, that kind of landscape is much friendlier and can facilitate movement and colonization better than a few little prairies surrounded by miles and miles of rowcrop agriculture and urban sprawl. In highly fragmented landscapes, keeping the needs of insect species in mind is critical when making management decisions. For example, burning an entire prairie could kill all the individuals of a particular species. And that can happen even with dormant-season fires because many insects overwinter above ground, as adults, larvae, or eggs. There are many conflicting ideas about how best to manage small, isolated prairies for insect conservation, in part because we know so little about most prairie insects. Some people advocate for not using fire as a tool at all, or for at least leaving portions of the prairie unburned for long periods of time. Unfortunately , as with all management strategies, there are multiple tradeoffs. Reducing fire frequency or eliminating fire from some areas creates other issues, including an increase in woody plant invasion that can reduce plant diversity—which, in turn, affects insect diversity. In general, the best advice for owners of small, isolated prairies is to be thoughtful about management decisions and to avoid blanket applications of fire or haying that don’t leave any areas of standing vegetation from which insects can recolonize. Grassland Birds As discussed earlier, grassland birds have habitat requirements unique to each species. Some, like horned larks, thrive on nearly bare ground while others , like sedge wrens, prefer tall, dense grass. In prairie landscapes, or where management of private lands is dominated by relatively intense grazing, the missing habitat component is often tall, rank vegetation that hasn’t had fire or grazing for several years. By contrast, in some eastern rural landscapes, grasslands may be hayed or burned but are rarely grazed and often are split into smaller pieces by wooded edges. This can create a lack of short-cropped habitat or, more important, short-to-midheight heterogeneous structure. Species like upland sandpipers tend to do well in western prairie regions where large short-cropped...