Pinyon jay habitat use and management recommendations in New Mexico pinon-juniper woodlands

Abstract

Pinyon Jays and piñon pines have a mutualism whereby the trees provide mast crops of highly nutritional seeds that enhance the jays’ population viability (Marzluff and Balda 1992), and the jays cache the seeds, serving as the tree’s main long-distance seed disperser (Ligon 1978). Breeding Bird Survey data indicate that Pinyon Jay populations have been declining for 50 years (Sauer et al. 2014), and they are currently the fastest-declining Pinon-Juniper bird species (Boone et al. in press). Ongoing decline of the piñon tree’s main seed disperser will limit the potential of the trees to reestablish in areas of high mortality, colonize higher elevations, or shift distributions northward in response to climate change.

Parent Publication

• Symposium Proceedings on Piñon-Juniper Habitats: Status and Management for Wildlife - 2016

Citation

Johnson, Kristine; Smith, Jacqueline; Sadoti, Giancarlo; Neville, Teri. 2020. Pinyon jay habitat use and management recommendations in New Mexico pinon-juniper woodlands. In: Malcolm, Karl; Dykstra, Brian; Johnson, Kristine; Lightfoot, David; Muldavin, Esteban; Ramsey, Marikay. Symposium Proceedings on Pinon-Juniper Habitats: Status and Management for Wildlife - 2016. Proceedings RMRS-P-77. Fort Collins, CO: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. p. 28-30.