Conservation Issues
As is the case in many other areas, the driving conservation issues in the shortgrass prairie are habitat loss and habitat alteration. Although human populations are comparatively low throughout much of the region, they are growing, and the accompanying land development is responsible for much of the habitat conversion. Within the BCR, urbanization is concentrated in Colorado's Front Range counties, some of the fastest-growing in the nation. Population densities there exceed 4,000 people/miČ, whereas population densities in some remote counties of the region are less than 1 person/miČ.

Because much of the shortgrass prairie is too dry to farm without irrigation, the amount of plowed land is not high and much of the region is still grassland. In Colorado, which has the biggest chunk of the BCR among the eight states, about 70% of the historical shortgrass prairie still exists, with the rest converted to cropland and urban developments. However, some sources suggest that only 20% still resembles the original, unaltered prairie, with the other 80% converted to other land cover types or seriously degraded by overgrazing.

Ideally, modern management would replicate the timing, intensity, and landscape distribution of the natural disturbances that shaped the shortgrass prairie (unfortunately, detailed information about presettlement conditions is lacking). In practice, however, modern agriculture tends to spread out grazing intensity evenly, producing a comparatively homogeneous landscape. For the purposes of bird conservation, some grassland parcels should be grazed heavily and others not at all, to replicate the heterogeneous landscape historically created by climate and native species grazing.

Population declines among shortgrass bird species have been largely overlooked by the conservation community until recently, due in part to widespread concern about population declines among Neotropical migrant bird species of the eastern deciduous forest. The result of this redirected focus is that grasslands are now arguably the highest bird conservation priority on the continent, as grassland bird species are declining faster than any other group of North American birds.

Associated Species
An important component of the shortgrass prairie ecosystem is the prairie dog. The species inhabiting the shortgrass prairie, the black-tailed prairie dog (Cynomys ludovicianus ), was recently proposed for listing under the Endangered Species Act. The proposal came about because the species' current range represents only about 2% of the presettlement range. It is absent from the other 98% of its historic range because of the combined effects of habitat conversion, control activities for agricultural purposes, and plague (an introduced disease). Habitat fragmentation has contributed, also, as many colonies are now separated by large expanses of cropland or other inhospitable land cover types, and prairie dogs have limited dispersal ability. Because of their vital role in habitat creation (very important for species such as Burrowing Owl and Mountain Plover), their decline may have been followed by declines of some shortgrass bird species.

Winter Range Issues
Efforts to address winter range issues are hampered by our ignorance of wintering bird distribution and ecology in Central and South America. Urbanization, overgrazing, and other forces of habitat conversion are probably contributing to population declines of some species, but much work remains to be done to identify all contributing factors.