Fran and Frederick Hamerstrom: Wildlife Conservation Pioneers
I S E V H C R A Y L I M A F M O R T S R E M A H
1 Meet Fran and Frederick Hamerstrom Together we made the decision to burn our bridges behind us and take to a life as biologists in the wilderness Fran Hamerstrom In early spring the Buena Vista Grasslands in central Wisconsin is full of birds on the move Many species of birds come to the marsh to nest and raise a family Geese cranes and hawks fly overhead And prairie chickens roam the grasslands each one looking for a mate Every year students from all over Wisconsin come to the marsh to count the prairie chickens The students have been coming here for more than 70 years They watch the prairie chickens dance And they listen to the sound of the prairie chickens booming call species spee seez a group of similar plants or animals marsh an area of soft wet land with grasses and related plants 1
N O S L U A P E L A D F O Y S E T R U O C O T O H P Meet Fran and Frederick Hamerstrom The booming call is the male prairie chicken’s mating song In the early spring dawn the males boom to attract the attention of the females Their booming call makes a deep haunting sound like that of a tympani drum in an orchestra Some people describe the booming call as one of the most fantastic sounds in the natural world This male prairie chicken’s neck feathers called pinnae are raised over his head to attract the female birds A long time ago thousands of prairie chickens lived in Wisconsin But as cities grew the prairie chickens lost their nesting grounds By 1850 the prairie chicken population began to decrease In the 1950s only about 2,500 prairie chickens still lived in Wisconsin But 2 scientists helped to save them Those scientists were Frances Fran and Frederick Hamerstrom tympani tim puh nee one of a set of 2 or 3 large drums that are played by one performer in an orchestra pinnae pin I 2
Fran and Frederick Hamerstrom Wildlife Conservation Pioneers 0 9 2 2 D I E G A M I I H W Aldo Leopold Fran and Frederick both grew up with a passion for wildlife In the 1930s Fran and Frederick were students of a famous scientist named Aldo Leopold who was known as the father of ecology Ecologists study plants and animals in their natural settings They try to understand how plants and animals depend on each other They study animals to learn why they live in one place but not another Scientists call the places where animals live their habitat All animals need a certain kind of habitat to survive Their habitat provides the food they like to eat and the surroundings they need to nest and raise their babies Fran and Frederick became ecologists when ecology was a brand-new science They learned that if habitat is disturbed ecology ee kah luh jee a branch of science concerned with the relationships between living things and their environment habitat the place where a plant or animal grows or lives in nature 3
