GoldenCheekedWarbler_RareasHensTeeth_Sexton_Chuck_AustinTX_18May2022_Reel4106.mp3

Chuck Sexton [00:00:00] The problems for the golden-cheeked warbler probably did not just start with the rapid urbanization of the Austin - San Antonio corridor in the 1970s or '80s or '90s.

Chuck Sexton [00:00:14] One of the early major studies of the golden-cheeked warbler was done by Warren Pullich, Sr. He wrote a book that was published in 1976 that surveyed all of the knowledge about golden-cheeked warblers that we knew at the time. And even in the mid '70s, Dr. Pullich was very concerned about habitat loss that had already occurred.

Chuck Sexton [00:00:37] He pointed out the impact of urbanization in the rapidly growing areas like Austin, but he was concerned about wholesale land clearing for common agricultural practices, particularly livestock production in the Hill Country - cattle, goats, sheep - that had been the impetus for the clearing of tens of thousands of acres of old-growth habitat.

Chuck Sexton [00:01:04] And it goes back even further, because there was a whole industry dating back into the late 1800s and early 1900s of a product called "cedar posts", fence posts, that were supplied to much of the country came from Ashe juniper that was cut in the Hill Country. And where extensive stands of that was cut through those early decades, golden-cheeked warbler habitat was lost.

Chuck Sexton [00:01:33] And so the landscape has been changing for the last 100, 150 years for not just urbanization, but all of the land uses that we have used the landscape for. And that habitat loss, as is the story for so many songbirds, habitat loss is the primary impact causing a population decline in the golden-cheeked warbler.

Chuck Sexton [00:02:02] One of the ironies is that, as people have pointed out, Ashe juniper is now probably as abundant and widespread as it ever was, or more so. But it's widespread because of some of those land use changes we have wrought - the overgrazing and the fire suppression which caused or allowed Ashe juniper to invade uplands and pasture land and agricultural lands and escape just the steep canyonlands where it had been confined in eons past by natural fire.

Chuck Sexton [00:02:37] So Ashe juniper has become more common, but those old-growth stands that the golden-cheeked warbler needs have become as rare as hens' teeth.