EAGLEVILLE, Mo., Dec. 3 (UPI) -- The prairie chicken population in Missouri appears to be increasing after enduring a couple of minimal breeding seasons, experts said.
Officials at the Nature Conservancy's Dunn Ranch in Missouri said while heavy rainfall impeded prairie chicken breeding in 2008, the species' population in the state appears to have increased this spring, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Thursday.
"We are seeing more birds now than we did last spring, which is an indication there's been reproduction," Randy Arndt, manager of the conservancy's Grand River Grasslands site, said. "While this past spring was wet, we didn't get the kind of 5-inch rainfall that just ruined nesting events the year before."
Despite such apparent population increases, experts estimate there are currently less than 500 prairie chickens in Missouri.
In order to help increase the species' population numbers in Missouri, a number of prairie chickens from Kansas were relocated to Missouri in 2008 as part of a Department of Conservation project.
The Post-Dispatch said the five-year project moved the Kansas animals to Missouri's Wah' Kon Tah Prairie, which is the property of the Nature Conservancy's Missouri chapter.
