Z THE AUDUBON BULLETIN 
frequently nest in late summer, they are not well fitted to withstand the 
heavy loss of nests occasioned by spring farming operations.” 
Hope for perpetuating prairie chickens in northern Illinois centers on the 
establishment and maintenance of grassland refuges in the vicinity of some 
of the surviving colonies. The sand prairies, on which most of the remaining 
prairie chickens are found, are of relatively low agricultural value, thus 
minimizing the cost of acquisition of land. 
Under a prairie grouse management program organized by Dr. and Mrs. 
Fred Hamerstrom of the Wisconsin Conservation Department, one 40-acre 
tract is being purchased per square mile of farmland over several town- 
ships in central Wisconsin to be left undisturbed as nesting cover. Both 
public funds and private donations are being used in the land purchasing 
program. Perhaps the Wisconsin plan could be modified for use in the 
relatively small prairie chicken range of northern Illinois. Because the 
northern Illinois prairie chickens over the centuries have become highly 
adapted to that particular region, every effort should be made to prevent 
their extinction. 
Recently, efforts to save the prairie chicken before it is too late became 
a nationwide movement. In 1953, the National Wildlife Federation, recog- 
nizing the prairie chicken as a threatened species, chose it as the symbol of 
Wildlife Week. At the same time, the Federation, through its president, 
Claude D. Kelley, appointed a National Committee on the Prairie Chicken 
to determine the status of this bird throughout its range and to outline a 
program of rehabilitation. Among the chief recommendations made by this 
committee in its First Report (March, 1958), was that in states where 
widespread restoration appeared impossible, suitable grassland refuges 
should be acquired for preservation of this bird as a living museum species. 
The Report stated: ‘Such areas would serve also to preserve other wild 
forms, both plants and animals, native to the original American grasslands. 
Prairie-chicken flocks so maintained would provide adapted birds in every 
state in case future land-use trends should permit. stocking of wider areas.” 
Other recommendations included an urgent appeal to the states to allot 
more funds for buying lands needed for management and study of prairie 
chickens; endorsement of a proposal for the establishment of a grasslands 
national monument; recommendation of educational and publicity campaigns 
to create public opinion against poaching and to inform the public of the 
rarity and value of prairie chickens as well as their habitat requirements. 
Director Glen D. Palmer, of the Illinois Department of Conservation, 
deserves much credit for being one of the first administrators to take action, 
by launching a program to stock prairie chickens on the Joliet Arsenal area. 
—Illinois Natural History Survey, Urbana 
a f £ 
