Hope is Not Lost!
How terrible! Surely, someone must have realized the plight of the sparrows and put a stop to their decline!
They did. As discussed in in “What's Being Done,” lawmakers, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations have discovered the plight of the Florida Grasshopper Sparrow and taken actions to prevent its extinction. But, even today in a world of increasing ecological activism and conservation, even with nature preserves erected to provide them with a haven in which to recover, the sparrow isn’t doing too well. Its population is still declining, actually. In 1996, the sparrow population was down to 600 individuals (“Florida Grasshopper Sparrow”). As of 2012, there were only 200 sparrows left (Spear, 2012).
How could this be?
Visit "Ecological Reasons" to learn how.
Introduction
Being perceived as threatening to humans or their livestock is a big cause of species endangerment. Threatening species, such as the wolf or grizzly bear, have been shot nearly to extinction within the US. However, standing at 5 inches, weighing a mere 17 grams (15 thousandths of a pound), and eating insects, the Florida Grasshopper Sparrow is certainly no big bad wolf. Its size and lack of valuable body parts also rules it out of being a target of poaching, another big species killer. What, then, has gotten our feathered friend into so much peril? And, why?
How Americans Killed the Prairie
Native dry prairie "Improved pasture"
Cattle Ranching
It turns out that cattle’s hooves—and, thus, man’s plow and bag of European grass seeds—have been making their mark on Florida’s habitats for over 400 years, ever since they hitched a ride with the earliest Spanish explorers coming from Europe. (“Florida Cattle Ranching”) According to the State Library and Archives of Florida, “Ranching is an essential economic activity that preserves many aspects of the natural landscape, protects water resources, and maintains areas used by wildlife or for recreation” (“Florida Cattle Ranching”)
But even if this is true, what has cattle ranching done for our endangered egg-layers? Has it "preserved many aspects of their natural landscape?"
It’s driven them to the edge of extinction, that’s what it's done! Florida grasshopper sparrows require large, treeless, relatively poor-draining grasslands that burn about once every two years (“Florida Grasshopper Sparrow”). According to Florida’s Audubon Society, more than 85% of such habitat has been destroyed—mostly to make way for “improved pastures” for cattle grazing (“Florida Grasshopper Sparrow [b],” 2015). Habitat destruction has played the largest role in the sparrow’s endangerment, and is why the sparrow’s population sunk as low as 200 individuals in 2012 (Spear, 2014).
