Playing Chicken at Muleshoe and Grulla National Wildlife Refuges

Mark Cancellare

Lesser Prairie-Chicken(Tympanuchus pallidicinctus)

Study Area

• 83 lek locations (2010-2012)

• 5 mile buffer

• Muleshoe and Grulla NWRs

Buffer Lek Locations

• 3.2 km buffer around each lek location

• 90% of all activity for a lek population

Random Locations

• 83 random locations generated

Buffer Random Locations

• 3.2 km buffer around each random location

Land Cover

• Land Use/Land Cover (LULC)

• National Land Cover Database (NLCD)

2011, 2001, 1992

AnalysisFRAGSTATS• Each 3.2 km buffer analyzed• Number of patches, mean patch size,

area of each class, total edge, edge density, mean patch edge, and other spatial statistics calculated

• t-Tests used to compare spatial statistics of lek locations to random locations

• 1992, 2001, and 2011 NLCD layers used to look at change over time

Increase Scale

• 10 mile buffer

• 83 new random locations

• 3.2 km buffer around each random location

Buffalo Lake NWR