Why Are There Robot Birds in Grand Teton National Park? Inside Effort to Solve Wildlife Crisis
Near Grand Teton National Park in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, a group of high school students is tackling a complex wildlife crisis with an unlikely tool: robotic birds designed to lure a declining species to safer ground.
The students built battery-powered decoys that mimic the movements and mating displays of greater sage grouse, a species whose populations across the West have fallen by as much as 80 percent since the 1960s, according to the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Habitat loss, energy development and human disturbance have driven the decline.
In the Jackson Hole region, a small and isolated group of the birds gathers each spring at a mating site on the grounds of Jackson Hole Airport, where growing air traffic has created dangers for both the grouse and aircraft. Over the decades, the number of birds at the site has dropped sharply.
A ‘Frankenbird’ With a Mission Was Deployed Around Grand Teton
To protect the grouse, scientists are trying to move them to a safer breeding area a few miles away. But sage grouse are deeply attached to their mating grounds and rarely relocate on their own. That is where the students’ “robo-grouse” come in.
“It’s kind of a Frankenbird,” said Gary Duquette, former engineering teacher at the Jackson Hole High School, who now mentors robotics students through the nonprofit Wonder Institute, per WyoFile. Powered by car batteries and programmed to gyrate to a sage grouse soundtrack, the robo-grouse “kind of do a turn, turn, turn, then do their wing, wing, wing,” Duquette said.
By copying the strut and behavior of real males, the robotic birds are meant to attract younger grouse and encourage them to start a new breeding site in a safer location.
“It’s a better alternative than the de-icing pads,” said Bryan Bedrosian, conservation director at the Teton Raptor Center and one of the involved biologists.
The Robots Were Built With Ingenuity and HelloFresh Packaging
The team of students combined creativity with practical engineering. They built outer shells, modeled after a taxidermist’s form, at a plastics lab in Riverton to hold the internal mechanics. Each bird is topped with a 3D-printed head, while real grouse wings — provided by Wyoming Game and Fish staff from hunter surveys — add authenticity.
Body feathers came from fly-tying materials at a local angling shop, and even packaging foam from a HelloFresh meal kit was repurposed to mimic the birds’ white breast feathers, complete with bright yellow air sacs.
“I didn’t even know grouse were a thing,” said Connor McCarter, a sophomore who worked for a year and a half with Duquette’s team of 10 other students to make the robo-grouse. “I learned a lot about them.”
How Teams Are Working on Restoring Habitats and Hope
Before deploying the decoys, conservationists restored roughly 100 acres of suitable habitat near the airport. But simply restoring land does not guarantee animals will return.
“Over the past eight years at Grand Teton National Park, we’ve been working with staff, youth crews, and community partners to restore about 100 acres of former pasture near the Jackson Hole Airport back into high-quality sage-grouse habitat,” park spokesperson Emily Davis wrote in an email to SFGATE.
“One of the challenges with restoration is that even when you create great habitat, wildlife doesn’t always show up right away,” Davis wrote.
Sage grouse rely heavily on social cues when choosing breeding grounds, so the robotic decoys perform mating displays — puffing their chests, moving around and playing recorded calls at dawn — to make the restored area seem active.
“To help jumpstart that activity, the team built lifelike stationary and robotic decoys and they play recorded breeding sounds to simulate an active lek,” Davis wrote. “The idea is to encourage birds to begin displaying and mating at the restored site. Because brood-rearing happens near the lek, this can help draw more sage-grouse to the area over time.”
Why Sage Grouse Matter
The species is known for elaborate courtship displays on communal breeding grounds called leks. Males fan their tails, inflate air sacs and produce popping sounds to attract females, according to the National Audubon Society. The birds are highly loyal to these sites, a behavior known as site fidelity, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
Sage grouse are also closely tied to the health of the sagebrush ecosystem. Sagebrush can make up nearly all of their winter diet, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, making their decline a signal of broader environmental problems affecting many other plants and animals.
The robo-grouse approach is still experimental, and researchers are closely monitoring whether the birds respond during breeding season. The project reflects a growing trend in conservation: combining habitat restoration with technology to rebuild struggling populations.
This article was created by content specialists using various tools, including AI.
