“The ‘Prairie Chicken’ has Gone”

Extract

History records the Pinnated Grouse, or prairie chicken (Tympanchus cupido). as known to the early American settlers who referred to the bird as the Minnesota Grouse. The demand for land in the United States quickly extirpated the bird from most of its former range as early as 1870. It appeared to enter Saskatchewan from the south-east in about 1900. No doubt the wealth of unsettled Canadian prairies was responsible for the extension of its range in Saskatchewan—south of highway No. 5 and east of the elbow of the South Saskatchewan River.