At one point not so long ago, Indiana was swapping three of its ruffed grouse for every wild turkey that Missouri would send our way.
That was in the early 1980s, when the Hoosier state was trying to reintroduce turkey to the rural landscape, while Missouri, short on ruffed grouse, wanted to increase its dwindling population of that bird.
Times have changed. The latest count of grouse in southern Indiana — male grouse produce a distinctive drumming sound with their wings that wildlife biologists listen for and count in prescribed locations (one is in Morgan County, in the Morgan-Monroe State Forest), then extrapolate in order to estimate total population — came up zero last year. And the year before that. In fact, the annual count returned zeroes four of the past five years.
In the 1980s, about 17,000 of the birds would be taken annually by about 15,000 Indiana hunters.
Now, the Indiana Department of Natural Resources is proposing a hunting ban on the bird in order to save and encourage growth of the few surviving populations still found in scattered locations. This bird, native to Indiana and once plentiful here, is in danger of vanishing from our woods and fields.
State wildlife biologists have a clear idea on why the grouse population has fallen so dramatically — the bird has lost its home.
Grouse thrive in early succession forest — basically a haphazard collection of spindly, young hardwoods and tangles of brush — what many people would call scrub land. Such habitat has been shrinking for years, and what remains is not enough to sustain the bird.
Veteran grouse hunter Jack Corpuz told Hoosier Times Outdoors editor Carol Kugler in last Sunday’s story that the natural resources department has been warning about the bird’s loss of habitat for the past 35 years, to little effect.
Fence rows might have provided such habitat. Or wildfires would periodically clear space in the woods that would soon evolve into early succession forest.
Now, fires are stamped out. Farmers optimize their land’s potential, planting all the way to the property line instead of keeping that tangle of scrub that used to separate neighbors.
And cutting, which would be an efficient way to encourage and maintain early succession forest, is a word that ignites its own flames in the minds of the public. That route would present the biggest challenge but perhaps would be the most effective means of protecting a bird native to Indiana, state foresters say.
The plight of the ruffed grouse reveals the incredible delicacy and complexity of our environment, as well as the passion and diversity of the arguments on how to best maintain equilibrium.
It is a sober reminder as well. Nature’s balance is so easily tipped, and so difficult to maintain. It’s hard work and must involve us all. There aren’t winning sides or losing sides. We’re either all winners or all losers.