eastern and middle portion of the State and spreading westward 

 with its settlement/' Cooke (1900:202) reported that the greater 

 prairie chicken first nested in Colorado in approximately 1899. 

 Dyche (1912:10) reports, "Informer years . . . prairie chickens 

 were found in great numbers, especially in the eastern part. At 

 present . . . prairie chickens are confined to counties in the 

 western part of the State." Bunker (1913:146) states relative to 

 the greater prairie chicken, "Formerly an abundant resident; still 

 common in some parts of western Kansas." In the period 1912- 

 1913, prairie chickens seemed to be at an all time low in Kansas; 

 anyhow a few years later Clapp (1922:9) wrote: "Prairie chicken, 

 one of the very finest game birds, and formerly abundant all over 

 the State, was practically extinct ten years ago. This bird has come 

 back handsomely and is now found in all sections where conditions 

 are favorable, even in the extreme eastern counties of the State.** 



A parallel to this situation is described by Yeatter (1943:378) for 

 Ilhnois. There, a general decline occurred from approximately 

 1880 until 1903 when the hunting season was closed for the first 

 time. By 1912, prairie chickens again had become sufficiently 

 numerous in some areas to elicit complaints from farmers. Thus, the 

 lowest population level in Illinois and Kansas did not occur at the 

 same time, but both declines may have resulted from local condi- 

 tions such as reduction in suitable range and overshooting. 



Since 1922, the greater prairie chicken has almost disappeared 

 from northwestern Kansas, and has remained on a more or less 

 stable range in parts of the eastern one-third of the State (see 

 Figure 2). The record is not clear as to which species it was that 

 Dyche (loc. cit.) and Clapp (loc. cit.) referred, but according to 

 Long (1937:77) the remnant population in northwestern Kansas is 

 of the greater prairie chicken. Specimens of the greater prairie 

 chicken from western Kansas in the University of Kansas Museum 

 of Natural History are, together with the year taken, from Ellis 

 County, 1904; Rooks County, 1905; Trego County, 1906; Osborne 

 County, 1907; Trego County, 1927. 



From the foregoing record, it seems that the population and range 

 of the greater prairie chicken have changed much in the past 100 

 years. Since the habitat requirements of a species would not be 

 expected to change, the cause of such changes in occupied range 

 must be sought in the habitat itself. Among possible causes of 

 changes in habitat are changes in cHmate and land-use. Considering 

 man as a part of the habitat, hunting pressure must also be con- 

 sidered as a contributing factor to these changes. Flora (1948:3-5) 



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