Calgary Zoo opens Canada's 1st greater sage-grouse breeding facility

There's some good news for oneof Canada's most endangered birds.

The Calgary Zoo has just openedthe first captive breeding facility in the country to help restore the greater sage-grouse population, which experts estimate has fallen below 400 individuals.

"I see the greater sage-grouse as an iconic part of our Canadian heritage; a key component of our prairie ecosystem," said Axel Moehrenschlager, director of conservation andscience at the zoo.

Once commonly found in Canada's prairie region and the northwesternUnited States, the greater sage-grouse now inhabit just half their historic range, in part because of habitat destruction and human development.

"We had a workshopof experts here a couple of years ago that was predicting the species might go extinct in the country in two to five years," Moehrenschlagersaid.

One of the actions that was suggested to address that was to create a facility to breed the birdsso that they could bereintroduced into thethe wildand eventually help restore and reinforce the dwindling population.

The zoo'snew 31,000-square-foot centre will not only breed and raise greater sage-grouse;it will also use cameras to monitor the birds and improve research into their incubation, survival and breeding.

In 2016, eggs were collected from Grasslands National Park in Saskatchewan and from birds relocated to Alberta from Montana. Today, the zoo's new facility houses 18 sage-grouse and ispart of the zoo's 10-year plan to help recover thatpopulation.