Submitted Photo A chestnut colored Longspur sits on a barbed wire. Restored grasslands mean a lot to birds and other wildlife, especially with habitat conditions the way they are right now in our state. Photo from NDGF.

You don’t have to be a biologist or range scientist to see how the land use of grasslands of North Dakota has changed.

Ashlyn Herron, a University of North Dakota master’s in biology student, is using technology to determine if high-quality grassland habitat restoration through the Meadowlark Initiative is successfully occurring. The Meadowlark Initiative is a statewide strategy that teams landowners, conservation groups, scientists and others to enhance, restore and sustain native grasslands in North Dakota.

Herron’s research employs the use of autonomous recording units, or ARUs, to record bird presence on reseeded grasslands.

“And we’re also comparing bird response from the reseeded grasslands to intact grasslands in the area, as well as cropland, so we can kind of see how occupancy of vocal birds is changing through stages of restoration,” she said.

The ARUs are composed of a circuit board, microphone, battery pack and a computer chip housed in vacuumed-sealed bags to protect them from the elements.

Eleven study sites selected from a database of landowners who actively partnered with the Meadowlark Initiative to restore grasslands were used during the 2023 field season, which was similar to the 2024 field season.

Counties included in the study were Logan, Dickey, Burleigh, Sheridan, McLean, McHenry, McKenzie and Divide.

“While this is anecdotal at this point, what we’re noticing is even a little bit of grass being planted is creating habitat for these birds. And we’re not seeing these dead zones that some croplands can be attributed to,” she said. “In these reseeded areas, birds are singing, they’re defending their territories … there is a use here that’s going on. And it’s also going to be creating grazing opportunities for these landowners in the future.”

North Dakota is primarily privately owned so their partnership is what makes this possible, Herron said, and she said she was personally indebted to every single one of the landowners who partnered with her.

“They are a great, great group of people and I’ve learned so much from working with them that I will take with me for the rest of my career,” she said.

The amount of information Herron is gathering across several counties wouldn’t be possible without the high-tech gadgets attached to metal posts. To fund a field staff, and it would take many individuals to equal what the ARUs accomplish, just doesn’t make financial sense.

“The ARUs really get to be our ears on the ground for a period of time,” she said. “I have 108 units on the landscape doing three-point counts a day for the entire summer. To have a field staff do that wouldn’t be feasible. And we also have a high degree of data standardization with these units that you just don’t get with field teams.”

“These restored grasslands mean a lot especially with habitat conditions the way they are right now in our state,” said Kevin Kading, Game and Fish Department private land section leader. “These acres can make a difference for a lot of grassland birds.”

And other wildlife, too.

“From the smallest insects to big game animals like white-tailed deer,” he said. “These acres of restored grassland will be on the landscape for years to come and will benefit the landowner and wildlife for a long time.”

Kading said the restored grasslands are not uniform in size and they don’t have to be.

Size doesn’t matter, especially if new grass is added to existing grassland habitat adding to the patch size.

“I would go as far as to say the status of habitat right now in some parts of the state is probably at its lowest point that I’ve seen in my career. We’ve lost a lot of grass, not just CRP, but native grasslands. North Dakota only has about 25% of its native grasslands remaining, and maybe over half of our wetlands are remaining,” he said. “When you combine the loss of grass and wetlands with the loss of tree rows, fence lines and the little odd areas that people are used to seeing, it’s significant.

“A lot of those are not on the landscape anymore. And so, every one of these projects like this really does help,” he added. “And whether it’s a smaller project or a larger project, every acre helps and every acre counts. I would say if a landowner is simply interested and wants to find out more, they can always call Game and Fish and start asking questions of one of our private land biologists.”