The Battalion
i'
m
MONDAY
April 24, 1996
GGIE
Page 3
A fowl way of life
A&M program aims to save Attwater prairie chickens
By John LeBas
The Battalion
A t one time, as many as one mil
lion Attwater prairie chickens
roamed the country between
Louisiana and Mexico.
Native Americans integrated the
chicken into their culture, imitat
ing the bird’s head and tail feather
displays and mating dances in
dress and ritual.
Now, mostly due to habitat re
duction, 40 chickens or less exist
in the wild.
However, a Wildlife and Fish
eries Sciences program at Texas
A&M is working to
halt the extinc
tion of this en-
dangered
species.
Dr. Nova
Silvy, a
professor in
the Depart
ment of
Wildlife
and Fish
eries Sci-
e n c e s ,
said the
Attwater
prairie
chicken is
actually one
of four prairie
grouse sub
species. The heath hen, a sub
species that used to live in in the
Eastern states, is already ex
tinct, and the Attwater prairie
chicken is predicted to die out in
the wild by 1998.
Tripping Daisy returns to
Bryan-College Station
“They require large expanses of
prairie habitat,” Silvy said, “and
that’s gone. The major reason is
that this habitat is the easiest to go
to crop land.”
Since the United States expand
ed from the East, the heath hen
was the first to go extinct, Silvy
said. Urban sprawl in Texas, like
in Houston, has helped contribute
to the Attwater prairie chicken
population crash.
Degraded prairie lands, on
which the chickens are more
susceptible to predation, and
fewer habitat-renewing fires
have also taken a toll on the
population.
The captive propaga
tion program at A&M
aims to stabilize and
raise the number in captivity,
while supplementing the existing
population, with the hope that
later, habitat conditions will im
prove,” Silvy said.
Along with similar programs at
the Houston and San Antonio
Zoos and the Fossil Rim Wildlife
Center, researchers at A&M are
striving to save the birds through
captive breeding.
The small number of chickens
has created breeding prob
lems, Silvy said.
; “One problem we found in
I the wild was we had isolat
ed populations that were
highly inbred,” he said. “In
the facilities, we bring in males
from one county to mate with
females from another.”
Researchers hope the
more genetically diverse
birds will have increased
vigor and a greater chance
of survival in the wild.
Clifton Griffin, a wildlife
and fisheries doctoral student,
said photomanipulation is used to
increase offspring numbers. Pho
tomanipulation involves altering
the amount of light hens receive
to induce more frequent egg lay
ing, and thus more chicks, he
said.
But Attwater chicks eat a lot of
insects in early life — up to 17
grams per day. Finding an ade
quate number of insects to feed the
chicks has been a bit of a hurdle,
Griffin said.
Food shortages may also affect
wild chickens, he said.
“One of the factors we feel like is
leading to the demise of the Attwa
ter prairie chicken is a lack of in
sect availability,” he said.
When chickens move into adult
hood and begin eating vegetation, a
new problem arises. The chickens
are raised on commercial feed in
captivity but must learn to eat vege
tation upon release.
“There are not any little red feed
and water bowls on the
prairie,” Griffin said.
“This year, we’re
going to try to train
them to go back to
native vegetation
before they’re re
leased,” Silvy
said.
Training
s u r -
vival in
the wild
remains a
large as
pect of the
prairie
chicken’s
future.
But Silvy said researchers are en
couraged by last year’s chicken re
lease — 15 percent have survived,
without any such training.
Typical survival rates in the
wild from egg to adult chicken are
about three percent.
This year, researchers hope to
release as many as 100 captive-
bred and trained birds in the wild.
These birds will be fitted with ra
dio transmitting collars for track
ing purposes.
While the fate of the chickens
remains to be determined, Griffin
is confident about their survival.
“Within a few years, we’ve
worked out many of the details of
raising the chickens,” he said.
“Now, we can increase the scale.
“We need to keep getting land,
because there is no sense in hav
ing a huge number of birds if you
have nowhere to put them.”
Griffin said the state of the
prairie chicken also points to the
poor condition of the entire tall
grass prairie ecosystem.
Without signifi
cant increas
es in popu
lation, the
Attwater
species
ja _ t will be
lost, he said,
and might indicate
the destruction of this entire
ecosystem.
“This is a critical year,” he
said. “Hopefully, it’s not too little,
too late.”
Tripping Daisy (above) is returning to College Sta
tion to play its first show at A&M since last sum-
mer. The band is playing tonight at The Tap.
Queens Theatre one of several buildings to be
renovated as part of downtown Bryan revitalization
By Kristina Buffin
The Battalion
T he oldest build
ing in down
town Bryan
dates back to the 1890s.
However, one hundred
years later, most of the
historic buildings are ei
ther deserted or in hor
rible condition.
Over the next few years, down
town Bryan will become a place
where more A&M students and
Bryan-College Station residents fre
quent for entertainment, shopping
and work.
The revitalization of downtown
Bryan will include the refurbishing
of the Queens Theatre, the LaSalle
Hotel and the Carnegie Library.
The owners of the 3rd Floor Canti
na and the Dixie Theatre, Willie
Bennett and John Williams, pur
chased the Queens Theatre when
they realized they were losing bigger
bands because the venues were not
large enough.
“The music scene is growing,” Ben
nett said. “More bars around town
have live music and there is an in
creasing overall awareness of the mu
sic scene in Bryan-College Station. We
believe in downtown Bryan.”
See Bryan, Page 4
Gwendolyn Struve, The Battalion
The Queens Theatre, which has been closed for 30 years, is being renovated.
musk poetry food RESEARCH PARK
FRIDAY. APRIL 26
7.00 PM
and its all free...
because we love you.
follow the
orange signs
down
University Dr.
and into
Research Park
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