Captive Breeding Program Could Save Florida Grasshopper Sparrow from Extinction

You wouldn't necessarily pin a sparrow as a species that needs saving. Yet the Florida grasshopper sparrow is one of the most endangered species in North America. Now, officials are moving forward with plans to collect eggs from nests in an attempt to initiate a captive breeding program in order to preserve the bird.

The Florida grasshopper sparrow is a small, short-tailed bird that's about five inches long. It's a dour looking bird with its black, gray and brown plumage. Living within the dry prairie ecosystem of central and south Florida, it can be found nowhere else in the world.

Because they rely so heavily on the praire habitat, their population numbers have plummeted--about 85 percent of dry prairie habitat has been destroyed. Few have seen or even heard the bird, and Audubon classifies it as the post endangered bird in the continental U.S. Currently, biologists estimate that a mere 200 of these tiny birds remain, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

The captive breeding program could help change that. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials have announced that the program will consist of volunteers and staff from their agency, the state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the state Park Service. In order to establish a population of these birds, the officials will attempt to collect eggs through early summer and then take them to the Rare Species Conservatory Foundation in Loxahatchee, Florida. There, the hatchlings will be raised in captivity in a years-long effort to help bolster the population health of sparrows still in the wild. If the wild sparrows do go extinct, these captive birds could help pave the way to establish a new population.

"Captive breeding is labor intensive and challenging. It is generally done as a last resort, and there are no guarantees. But we have to try," said Larry Williams, the head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service office in Vero Beach, in an interview with the Tampa Bay Times. "This is an emergency, and the situation for this species is dire. This is literally a race against time."