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Effects Of Prescribed Burning On Grassland Nesting Birds On Conservation Reserve Program Areas In Gove County, Kansas, Justin Vern Hamilton

Master's Theses

Great Plains grasslands were once one of the largest ecosystems in North America. However, farming, ranching, urban development, widespread fire suppression, and numerous other factors have created a great loss of this habitat in central North America. Organisms that depend on that habitat, such as grassland nesting birds, also have declined. The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), which was established in 1985, paid landowners to remove land with highly erodible soils from production and plant it with perennial vegetation. Increases in CRP acreages brought about increases in numbers of several bird species that were in decline before the program existed. Prescribed …