Western meadowlarks and wet prairie habitat in the Willamette Valley: population enhancement through private land habitat restoration

The objective of this project was to determine the occurrence, area requirements, nesting success, and
associated habitat characteristics of Western Meadowlarks on private land wet prairie restoration sites
and a reference protected wet prairie site with a large population of meadowlarks. Information from the
reference site will be used to characterize the coarse-scale habitat features of territories and the finescale
habitat conditions at nest sites being selected for by meadowlarks, and provide a baseline to assess
the progress of the restoration sites to achieve those conditions. Management recommendations will be
developed to describe how restoration sites can be manipulated to resemble the structure and
composition of productive meadowlark habitat in the Willamette Valley.