New Mexico’s Beloved Pinyon Jay Is Losing Its Pine Habitat

The story was originally published on Undark.

There was a bird call in the mountains of New Mexico. A couple of pinyon jays chattered loudly as they flew over the trees in the foothills. The resource management specialist with Santa Fe County said that they have fun calls. They are a very hard bird to dislike.

In the fall and winter, the jays find pion nuts in the dense habitat on the ridgetop and cache them in more open areas near the road. It is important for the jays to caching. The pion nuts provide essential sustenance for the bird, and the jay provides critical seed dispersal for the tree, which is interdependent. The pinyon jay is a keystone species of the arid forests of diverse pion pines and junipers.

New Mexico is home to one-third of the population of the blue crows.

Jays and pion pines help create vital habitat for many plants and animals. In New Mexico, the pines are a traditional food source.

The blue birds used to roam the West in huge flocks in the winter. flocks of more than 100 are rare now. The population of pinyon jays has declined over the last 50 years.

In New Mexico, the jay is listed as a species of greatest need, and this year the Defenders of Wildlife petitioned to list it under the Endangered Species Act, citing "woefully inadequate" protections at the federal and state levels.

Climate change and a long history of pion pine removal are the two main culprits of the jays decline. The decline in nut production is due to the impact of both. According to Darr, conservativism is important for the jay, but also for an entire environment and all the other species that depend upon it.

Land managers are racing to implement wildfire prevention measures in the midst of a record-setting wildfire season in New Mexico. Billions of dollars were directed to federal agencies this year and they are planning to increase treatments on millions of acres of federal land.

Thinning is one of the treatments used in forests. In the past, pion-juniper forests were cleared using destructive techniques such as chaining, but now federal agencies use moreselective thinning.