Conservation and Management

Figure 7. Change in relative abundance of Field Sparrows breeding in the United States and southern Canada, 1966-2003.

Effects Of Human Activity

Sensitivity To Disturbance At Nests And Roost Sites

Sometimes desert nests if disturbed during nest building; rarely desert at other times (Best 1977b). Strausberger and Burhans (2001) stood at nests during construction and egg laying; at 20 such trials with adults birds present – no desertions.

Shooting And Trapping

Not routinely hunted or trapped.

Pesticides And Other Contaminants

No change in population size after spraying of Sevin, even at 6 times normal dosage (Bart 1979). But in a New York field given a one-time treatment with 2,4,5-T and kerosene, Field Sparrows did not breed in the field for an 18 year period (Lanyon 1981).

Degradation Of Habitat

Field Sparrows do not breed in human-dominated landscapes, such as suburban/exurban areas or mowed/tilled acreage (Westemeier and Buhnerkempe 1983, Sample 1989, Burhans and Thompson 2006). Expansion of these human-dominated landscapes can permanently reduce breeding habitat availability.

In most of the range, where somewhat natural situations persist, suitable breeding habitat is short-lived. As natural successional processes occur, breeding habitat is inevitably lost, and population sizes are reduced. An exception is in grassland regions that dominate the western portions of the species’ range; here natural successional processes actually create and maintain breeding habitat (Dechant et al. 1999). The conservation of natural grassland habitat in such programs as the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) may be one factor underlying the general increase in Field Sparrow numbers in the prairie regions (Best et al. 1997, McCoy et al. 1999, Sauer et al. 2005; Fig. 7).

Management

Despite declines over much of its range, the species remains abundant and thus is not often of management or conservation concern. It is likely that abundance in the former heavily forested eastern part of the range is higher now than it was prior to logging and clearing for settlement, e.g. in a Pennsylvania managed forest Field Sparrow contacts/100 ha increased from 0 to 94 following cutting (Yahner 2003)

Presence of suitable habitat (open areas with scattered woody vegetation) is key to maintaining local populations. Thus if woody vegetation is removed from fields, they are not used (Stauffer and Best 1980, Herkert 1991). Burning is tolerated as long as woody vegetation remains (Best 1979, Herkert 1994). Mowing reduces settlement; Westemeier and Buhnerkempe (1983) found that idle fields were preferred over high-mowed fields (>30 cm stubble remaining), but no breeding in hayed fields.

In once forested areas, long term suitable habitat has been created and could be easily maintained in reclaimed strip mines (Galligan et al. 2006), in unmanipulated field borders (Marcus et al. 2000), and in power line rights-of-way (Yahner et al. 2005).

Management recommendations by Dechant et al. (1999) include protecting existing prairie and successional habitats; avoiding practices that completely remove woody vegetation; burning to prevent the encroachment, but not removal, of woody vegetation; and removing the canopy and thinning shrubs and saplings on forested habitats.