Texas Fauna Project

Attwater’s Prairie Chicken

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Royce Juries worked as a wildlife biologist at Texas Parks and Wildlife for close to four decades, involved with waterfowl, quail, alligators, whitetail deer, and the Attwater's prairie chicken. Here he recalls the prairie chicken surveys that he began in 1970 with his TPW colleague, Bill Brownlee. The counts showed the decline of the grouse (likely due to prairie loss, fire ant expansion, and heavy rain events) , leading to near extinction in the wild, and captive breeding and release efforts in the 1990s.