Minnesota Prairie Chicken Society marks 50 years of conservation efforts
Apr. 7—Prairie chickens and the grasslands they need to survive were kind of overlooked, one might say, back in 1973, when two young biologists working in Crookston decided to see if they could draw some attention to the birds and the prairies.
Dan Svedarsky had moved to northwest Minnesota in 1969 from his home state of Missouri to join the faculty at the University of Minnesota Crookston, and Terry Wolfe was just a few months into his job as area wildlife manager for the Department of Natural Resources in Crookston.
There were prairie chickens in Missouri, Svedarsky says, but he had never seen one until he ventured out on the prairie in Polk County with Jerry Maertens, who preceded Wolfe as manager of the DNR's Crookston area wildlife office before transferring to Thief Lake Wildlife Management Area near Middle River, Minnesota, in 1972.
Maertens, a prairie chicken advocate who photographed the birds from blinds placed on their booming grounds, was manager at Thief Lake until 1988, when he became assistant regional wildlife supervisor in Bemidji until retiring in the mid-'90s.
The spectacle of seeing and hearing those "prairie boomers" that long-ago morning on the prairie with Maertens left an indelible impression, Svedarsky recalls.
"I saw my first prairie chicken, and I haven't looked back since," he said. "Here was this bird that looked kind of — you might say 'vanilla' — until they display. And then — holy man! — they raise these neck feathers up and blow up this orange (sac) on their neck, and they don't even open their mouth except to cackle.
"This sound apparently comes through the skin."
Svedarsky's enthusiasm for prairie chickens wasn't lost on Wolfe, and with Maertens' help, they developed a plan to increase public awareness of these "stars of the prairie" and their grassland habitat with a gathering in April 1973 in Kiehle Auditorium on the UMC campus.
So began the Minnesota Prairie Chicken Society, which marks its 50th anniversary Saturday, April 22 — Earth Day — in Rothsay, Minnesota, site of this year's annual meeting.
It's a fitting location for the 50th anniversary meeting, given Rothsay's distinction as the "Prairie Chicken Capital of Minnesota" and home of "Boomer," the "World's Largest Prairie Chicken."
From those humble beginnings the Minnesota Prairie Chicken Society has not only survived, but thrived and today sports upwards of 200 members from across prairie chicken range and beyond.
Svedarsky and Wolfe remain active in the organization as directors at large.
"I was by no means an expert on prairie chickens at the time — I was learning as I went along," said Wolfe, who retired as the DNR's Crookston area wildlife manager in 2012. "But I guess — you know — Dan Svedarsky is a bit infectious.
"I've kind of thought a lot of times that Dan and I have gone a long way on the back of prairie chickens."
There wasn't much known about Minnesota prairie chicken numbers back then, Svedarsky says, and the Chicken Society helped set the stage for annual surveys of booming grounds, or leks, throughout the state's prairie chicken range, which extends roughly from Red Lake County in the north to Wilkin County in the south.
"We didn't really know if (prairie chickens) were in bad shape or if they were doing OK," Svedarsky said. "And we didn't really know the trends because there had not been an ongoing census."
The plan developed during that initial conference provided credibility with the Legislature when it came time to ask for funding, Svedarsky says.
"That was really timely to have done that," he said. "So, that was just one of several positive spin-offs that we didn't quite anticipate when we started it all, and we organized that conference just to kind of determine where we were at as far as prairie chickens."
Brian Winter of rural Glyndon, Minnesota, has been president of the Prairie Chicken Society for the past 29 years. He credits the group's longevity to a core group of dedicated conservationists who serve on the Society's board.
"They put their volunteer time in to help keep the operation going," Winter said.
Then as now, the need to increase awareness of grasslands and the importance of prairie landscapes hasn't changed, said Winter, who retired in 2021 after nearly 37 years with The Nature Conservancy, much of it spent working out of the TNC's Bluestem Prairie Scientific and Natural Area.
"The need to continue our grassland conservation efforts if we want to keep prairie chickens on the landscape has never been greater," Winter said. "I'm still surprised how many people aren't even aware that prairie chickens are on the landscape. When you talk Fargo-Moorhead, within 15 miles of city limits, The Nature Conservancy's Bluestem Prairie is one of the best places to see prairie chickens — if not the best place in the state — and people just aren't aware of it.
"I do think the Society has really helped increase that awareness but there's still certainly much more to do."
Conserving grasslands, he said, is essential to preserving populations not only of prairie chickens, but other iconic prairie species such as the western meadowlark and monarch butterfly.
Setting up viewing blinds on known prairie chicken booming grounds has been one way to increase that awareness, Winter says. The Society also distributes a newsletter four times a year, which is distributed electronically and posted to the website at
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In most cases, it's Prairie Chicken Society Board members or members of the Society who build and coordinate the viewing blinds.
"We've provided viewing blinds for thousands of people that never would have seen prairie chickens otherwise," said Ross Hier, a retired Crookston DNR wildlife manager and vice president, secretary and archivist of the Prairie Chicken Society who also edits the newsletter. "It does have an impact on their lives, whether they give financial support to grasslands or talk to somebody who says 'What do we need that grass for?' Then they can fill them in that it's pretty important for water, pollinators and whatnot.
"And it's very important for chickens, which is our mascot, of course."
There have been several notable developments in the Prairie Chicken Society's 50-year history, Winter says, including an effort to transplant birds from northwest Minnesota to the Minnesota River Valley that ultimately proved unsuccessful, and the state's first prairie chicken season since 1942, which has been an annual opportunity since 2003.
Perhaps the biggest development, though, was hatched in 2015, when the Prairie Chicken Society began partnering with Pheasants Forever to tap into grant funding from the Lessard Sams Outdoor Heritage Council to purchase grassland habitat in prairie chicken range.
The Council oversees the Outdoor Heritage Fund, a pot of money created by a constitutional amendment Minnesota voters passed in 2008 to dedicate a three-eighths of 1% sales tax increase to clean water, wildlife, parks and the arts.
Since 2015, Winter says, the partnership has secured seven LSOHC grants to protect 15 tracts of land for 4,000 acres across five counties in northwest and western Minnesota. An eighth grant awaits final approval by the Minnesota Legislature, he says.
"We've got seven years of funding, and that adds up to $18 million," Winter said. "We couldn't be doing this acquisition work without Pheasants Forever. We're all volunteer, we don't have paid staff, we don't have attorneys that can review options and purchase agreements and deal with the critical work that goes into buying a piece of land. So we're identifying landowners, striking deals and then Pheasants Forever is working as what I would call a great partner and doing a lot of that administrative function that ensures that these deals are completed in a timely and effective manner."
As for the prairie chickens, the population in Minnesota is hanging on, but not booming by any means. Spring booming ground surveys conducted by the DNR in coordination with volunteer partners tallied an estimated population of 1,336 males and 37 birds of unknown origin — possibly prairie chicken-sharptail hybrids — on 120 leks in 2022. In 2017, by comparison, the survey tallied 1,412 male chickens and 59 birds of unknown origin on 146 leks.
Prairie chicken populations seem to have dropped "fairly dramatically" as acreage in the federal Conservation Reserve Program declined and are now closer to levels seen before the advent of CRP in the mid-1980s, Winter says.
With less CRP grassland on the landscape, the work of the Minnesota Prairie Chicken Society and partners such as Pheasants Forever remains as important as ever. The Society, he says, will continue working with Pheasants Forever to acquire land as long as they're successful in securing funding.
"Just as these land projects are very successful, they're very critical if we want to see prairie chickens stay on the landscape forever, which is really the goal here," Winter said.
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