Taberville Conservation Area ? Years ago, hundreds of prairie chickens danced in a spring mating ritual here, making a sound commonly known as “booming.” Lately, the population of the grassland birds has been anything but booming.

Sharron Gough, a biologist leading the Missouri Department of Conservation’s effort to bring the endangered prairie chickens back from the brink of extinction, has reason to be encouraged, though.

Gough spotted only three males at dawn Thursday.

In a nearby field, 10 more males were out courting.

“At least there are a few guys here,” Gough said.

The number of prairie chickens in Missouri and Kansas has been dropping for years. In the 1860s, there were a million prairie chickens in Missouri. Last spring, there were 500.

Even on the 1,700-acre Department of Conservation area near Taberville, the decline is noticeable. There were 50 booming males in 1999 and only 20 last spring.

“Taberville has always been a strong point for them,” Gough said. “It’s scaring me.”

In Kansas, the prairie chicken is not endangered. However, biologists say the birds have disappeared from several eastern Kansas counties.

The problem for prairie chickens — and for other grassland birds — is a delicate habitat need.

Roger Applegate, a biologist for the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks, said that both overmanaged and unmanaged prairies can present problems for grassland birds.

Overburning, overgrazing and aerial spraying for weed control decreases plant diversity and prairie quality; unmanaged prairies have overgrown trees and non-native plants.

“We don’t have enough of the in-between management that causes a lot of the plant species to help birds,” Applegate said.

In both states, prairie parcels are often surrounded by crop fields or pastures with non-native fescue grass, which has little value to wildlife.

“It’s a struggle to figure out what to do for them,” Gough said.

At Taberville, located southeast of Kansas City in St. Clair County, conservationists are trying to find the balance between overmanagement and a lack of management. Workers burned half of a cattle grazing area earlier, resulting in one half with short, fresh, green flowers and grass and the other half with tall, brown grasses from last year.

“We find that the cattle munch down on grasses mostly in the burned area,” Gough said. “But they also walk through the tall stuff that’s not burned, and they make paths. So the prairie chickens will have nesting cover. But they’ve also got open areas to easily move and find food.”

The plan is a combination of research in Kansas and Oklahoma and experience from cattlemen trying to improve forage quality.

In the past, cattle were kept off many conservation prairies because of concerns about overgrazing and public safety fears that cattle would limit wildflowers.

But prairie chickens evolved with bison and elk in a time when fall wildfires were frequent.

The fires help native wildflowers, which then attract insects.

“Bugs are the essential food for young chicks, and it’s absolutely critical in those first days,” Gough said.