Transcript:
The Pinyon Jay is worth saving for a lot of reasons. First and foremost, Defenders of Wildlife believes that every wildlife species is important and worth saving. But the Pinyon Jay is also a keystone species for pinyon juniper woodlands. They are the primary disperser of pinyon pine seeds. Pinyon pines, unlike other pines, have very heavy seeds that have no wings so they depend on wildlife, especially pinyon jays, to disperse their seeds. Pinyon Jay flocks will fly around over thousands of miles looking for those seeds. They will then cache them to be eaten throughout the rest of the year. They remember where a very large proportion of those seeds are, but inevitably they forget where some are and then they’ve planted a pinyon tree. Pinyon juniper woodlands have for a very long time historically been considered by a lot of people junk habitat. It is actually a highly diverse ecosystem. It’s only found in the few states that have pinyon jays in the Intermountain region and southwest region of the United States. And it’s an important ecosystem not only for wildlife, as I mentioned, but also for humans. In New Mexico, the pinyon seed is integral to culture.
The taste of pinyon nut. I really enjoy the taste of roasted pinyon nuts. I go out and pick pinyons when it’s in harvest, usually every third year. To my culture, the pinyon seeds represent abundance. So when they’re harvested, our native tribe, they they get very excited like a Thanksgiving feast. I think it’s only natural that we enjoy what we have with nature. I hope we continue to have these pinyon nuts growing and continue to harvest them and continue to share them with the pinyon jay birds.
The Pinyon Jay is in an extremely tight relationship with the pinyon pine, and the pinyon pine has had a major die off in recent years. Partly caused by climate change and drought, and because of that extreme dry out the pinyon jay doesn’t have its food source in its habitat. And so we believe that the pinyon jay numbers have been declining dramatically with the decline of the pinyon tree. Over the last 50 years 85% of the pinyon jay have been lost in that short period of time. So it’s in real trouble and it’s on a bad trajectory.
Pinyon Jays are one of the fastest declining bird species in the U.S. Conserving a keystone species that is critical for the continuation of an entire ecosystem that supports hundreds and thousands of other species makes it even more important that we conserve this species.
We need the protections of the Endangered Species Act for this bird as its numbers declined dramatically. If the pinyon jay numbers keep declining at this current rate, it will not be long before this bird is extinct. And if this bird goes extinct, so too will its habitat in the pinyon juniper woodlands, which is an iconic habitat in the west.
