Ruffed Grouse,Bonasa umbellus.
The 19th Century pioneer literature of northwest Arkansas included references to this "wood hen" (see, for example,
Neal 1958, and Donat 1974:12). This population seems to have been extirpated in the region by around 1900, presumably
as a result of extensive cutting of the forests. Professor F. L. Harvey of the University of Arkansas considered it
very scarce in the Fayetteville area in 1883 (Howell 1911). During the 1980s, wild-trapped birds from other regions of
North America have been released near Ponca in Newton County and near Hagarsville in Johnson County in an attempt to
establish a wild population in areas of the Buffalo National River and the Ozark National Forest.
Greater Prairie-Chicken,Tympanuchus cupido.
Extirpated. In the 19th Century, this species was a resident in the open grasslands of the western Arkansas Ozarks
(see, for example, Ellis 1957, Neal 1958). It disappeared early; the ornithologist Albert Lano (1921) was greatly
surprised when a bird was killed west of Fayetteville in 1919. Dean Crooks reported the last one from the region
(Baerg 1951), undoubtedly from the grasslands of Benton County. The loss of this species was probably the result
of hunting pressure and the conversion of its grassland habitat to the production of wheat, a crop that covered
as many as 100,000 acres in northwest Arkansas during the period 1870 to 1920. Flocks can still be seen on several
preserved prairie remnants in the Missouri Ozarks (Wilson 1984).