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Avian Response To Meadow Restoration In The Central Great Plains, Rosalind B. Renfrew, Douglas H. Johnson, Gary R. Lingle, W. Douglas Robinson

USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

Native grassland is one of the most heavily degraded of all North American ecosystems, and restoration of altered grasslands is a tool used to mitigate some of the biological ramifications of past land use practices. Providing habitat for grassland-dependent bird species often is one of the many goals of restoration. We evaluated the efficacy of meadow restoration for breeding birds in the Nebraska Platte River Valley by comparing the bird community and vegetation structure on 25 natural (original sod) and 25 restored meadows. We conducted principal components analyses on the vegetation structure and on the bird community, and modeled the …