Photo: Dick Dickinson/Audubon Photography Awards, Attwater's Prairie-Chicken chicks are raised by the hundreds at the Houston Zoo and released to the wild. Prairie chicken information. Then, agriculture and development swallowed up 99 percent of the native grassland; droughts, storms, and invasive fire ants pushed the population to the brink. 0000017488 00000 n
A distinct subspecies of Greater Prairie Chicken that once numbered a million strong and called coastal grasslands from Louisiana to the Mexican border home, it was more than decimated by development in its native habitat, with less than 50 birds left in … The chickens are a boom-and-bust species. . 0000003893 00000 n
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Speak out to reinstate critical bird protections under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. 0000039036 00000 n
Right now there’s quite a bit more native prairie left than there are chickens to fill it, but that says more about chicken numbers than the health of the prairie. 0000141161 00000 n
Audubon does not participate in political campaigns, nor do we support or oppose candidates.”. These individuals are used as breeding stock in order to produce additional young for release into the wild. They inflated their yellow air sacs and emitted a strange, booming sound across a sea of grasses. The process of releasing captive-bred birds goes in stages. The thing to remember is that all population growth is slow to start, even with fast-booming species, Morrow says. Gail Patricelli is one of a few researchers using robotic birds to study avian courtship. 0000023556 00000 n
The prairie here is another remaining sliver of native grassland, and is a magnet for wildlife; deer lope by in the distance, and night herons primly stalk along the drainage ditches. Approximately 100 Attwater’s prairie-chickens are currently being held in breeding facilities. In the pens, however, the males couldn’t see each other, and so often failed to display; the females, unable to choose, often laid infertile eggs. They glare at each other as they perform, and occasionally get into scuffles with neighbors through the mesh dividing each pen. It’s a feeling familiar to many who work with the Attwater’s Prairie-Chicken. One of the things prairie-chickens like to do is dance. The staff puts out food for a week or two, and eventually the wild birds wander off to start new lives. “Every hen that was around there was just standing at the front, like ooooh,” Bailey says, her voice fond. Every September before the breeding season starts, everyone involved in the program—including stakeholders from the refuge and the various zoos that raise prairie-chickens (Glen Rose’s Fossil Rim Wildlife Center, Caldwell Zoo, Abilene Zoo, and the Houston Zoo, which has the largest breeding facility of the bunch)—meet to take stock of the captive population and to decide which birds will be paired in the coming season. 0000042653 00000 n
To support our journalism, please make a donation today. 0000007427 00000 n
Photo: Houston Zoo . In 1995, the first year, they released 13 chicks. (It's a subspecies of the Greater Prairie-Chicken.) Their population has declined dramatically since 1993, when an estimated 456 Attwater prairie chickens existed in the wild. 0000032210 00000 n
But they couldn’t control the weather. 0000141282 00000 n
The good news is that, as of May 10, 17 nests had been located: 12 on the refuge and 5 in Goliad County. Only by protecting and restocking habitats with captive-bred birds can this species survive in the wild. (Although there’s now no way to prove it, Morrow suspects that the sharp declines in prairie-chicken numbers happened when the ants expanded their range into the coastal prairies in the 1960s.). Pencil lines mark air cells within the egg and help the Houston Zoo team monitor development. 0000005134 00000 n
Those were good days, Bailey says: They’d worked out most of the kinks in the breeding program and things were looking up. xڌ�OH�aǿ�mn��Nah�MB���d���,fx�0)��� Today the prairie-chickens are quite uncommon and localized; the race on the Atlantic seaboard, called the Heath Hen, became extinct in 1932. In 1994, that … A long drought, followed by the 2015 Tax Day flood, the 2016 Memorial Day Flood, and then the 2017 juggernaut of Hurricane Harvey repeatedly decimated the wild population. 0000063551 00000 n
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Their population has declined dramatically since 1993, when an estimated 456 Attwater prairie chickens existed in the wild. 0000037952 00000 n
A male Attwater's Prairie-Chicken booms next to a hen at Attwater's Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge near Eagle Lake, TX. 0000023697 00000 n
Follow along as Ollie, an awesome kid, tells you about the Attwater's prairie chicken. Then it was 50, then 100. Of those, 5 (3 at APCNWR and 2 at Goliad) had hatched. 0000050221 00000 n
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Check this out, he's making quite a scene! Despite the small facility’s location, it’s wholly operated by staff from the Houston Zoo, to whom NASA offered the land in 2005. This usually occurs in early- to mid-March. 0000033283 00000 n
Now, while females don't have quite as much free choice as in the wild—the keepers choose their partners based on genetic compatibility—the appearance of choice means their fertility has skyrocketed. “They loved him . 0000003551 00000 n
Attwater’s Prairie Chicken Since 1937, biologists have been tracking the number of Attwater’s Prairie Chickens in the wild. The greater prairie chicken was almost extinct in the 1930s due to hunting pressure and habitat loss. “It felt like a kick in the teeth,” Rossignol, who retired earlier this year, recalls. 0000034345 00000 n
Photos: Courtesy of Stephanie Adams/Houston Zoo, Right: A young prairie-chicken is outfitted with a radio transmitter at the NASA facility. They inflated their yellow air sacs and emitted a strange, booming sound across a sea of grasses. 0000005540 00000 n
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Our email newsletter shares the latest programs and initiatives. For 26 years, a coalition of zoos, U.S. 0000040427 00000 n
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They usually hatch after about 26 days, and the first room the hatchlings ever see sits in the back of the zoo’s bird facility. 0000057156 00000 n
. Left: Radio transmitters wait to be placed on prairie-chickens before they're released to the wild. And then there’s Attwater’s Prairie Chicken. It stands now as the zoo’s primary matchmaking spot for prairie-chickens, and the air hums with the sound of excited birds. Photos: Courtesy of Stephanie Adams/Houston Zoo . 0000139408 00000 n
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First the months-old chicks are transported from the city to outside pens at the Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge, where they get used to their surroundings. 244 135
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There are about 500 eggs here, 60 or 200 to a machine, each carefully marked with genealogical information. We protect birds and the places they need. It hasn’t been a waste.”. 0
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The sound first registers as a vague thrumming on the breeze; come closer and it resolves into a pitched, resonant call, hollow and haunting as breath over a glass bottle, accompanied by the staccato drum of tiny, scaled feet on hard-packed earth. “We have amongst ourselves had discussions about [extinction],” Rossignol says. Attwater’s Prairie-Chickens are also most active in spring, but their low numbers limit your chances of act… 246 0 obj<>stream
Once, Bailey says, she came in to find one of the males—subsequently dubbed “Frankenchicken”—badly beaten and limping around the wrong pen; they suspect that he snuck into the pen next door to fight with his neighbor. Today, less than one percent of the original 6 million acres of coastal prairie remains. 0000033951 00000 n
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They’ll dance it as long as there are hens left to watch; the hens will lay as long as there are males there to woo them. At one time, the eerie hollow moaning of male prairie-chickens displaying on their spring "booming grounds" was a common sound across much of central and eastern North America. Hannah Bailey, the Houston Zoo’s curator of birds, unlocks the door to the breeding area and ushers me inside. The sun is rising over the Katy prairie, and a slightly chilly breeze greets the couple of dozen nature enthusiasts huddled in a group at the front of the parking lot for the visitor’s center. 0000006071 00000 n
Attwater’s prairie-chickens are currently being kept in captivity at Houston, Caldwell, and Abilene Zoos, as well as Fossil Rim Wildlife Center in Texas. Chicks are fitted with a radio transmitter and released at the refuge once they are capable of independent survival. 0000033381 00000 n
Mating occurs through April and May. Left: Attwater's Prairie-Chicken eggs are carefully arranged in one of the Houston Zoo's incubators. 0000032516 00000 n
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Right: A newly hatched Attwater's Prairie-Chicken takes in the world. Attwater's Prairie-Chicken chicks are raised by the hundreds at the Houston Zoo and released to the wild. Habitat has also been lost because of heavy grazing by cattle, although some cattle ranches maintain good grassland habitat suitable for prairie chickens. 0000140848 00000 n
The fertility of both sexes is intricately tied to this ritual. A record-breaking 60 inches of rainfall flooded out the bayous of Houston and swamped the surrounding countryside. “What makes it tough is that if everything lined up perfectly for a couple of years, the birds would rebound. 0000141126 00000 n
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Within that section, the species is classified under the "Red List" meaning it has a very small population and high vitality threats. Prairie dogs tend to be celebrated for their larger ecological virtues. 0000006478 00000 n
“If the chicks can injure themselves, they will,” Bailey says. Before the storm, the wild population comprised 42 birds. “It was really demoralizing . 0000020799 00000 n
Mike Morrow, the refuge’s ecologist, suggests that the storm carried off 80 percent of them. Attwater's Prairie-Chickens in a temporary pen where they will be held for a few weeks before being released into the wild at the wildlife refuge. Things that could normally be absorbed by a healthy population spread across a wide geographic range—a direct hit from a hurricane or natural predation from owls and coyotes—suddenly become a matter of life or death, and attrition alone can drag a species down. 0000023886 00000 n
So, if you want a dozen eggs a day, buy 18 hens. On August 25, 2017, the Category 4 Hurricane Harvey made landfall on the Texas coast. 0000031133 00000 n
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Fish and Wildlife Service officials, and private citizens have tried to salvage the remnants of the population. Photo: Howard Arndt/Audubon Photography Awards, Great Egret. Pencil lines mark air cells within the egg and help the Houston Zoo team monitor development. The Houston Zoo manages the captive breeding program for the Attwater’s prairie chicken. The catch, though, is that zoo staff have had to accept that male prairie-chickens will do their level best to beat each other up through the blinders. 0000015675 00000 n
Eventually, they found the culprit: invasive red fire ants, whose voracious appetites cleared the prairie of the small native insects the chicks depended on for food. 0000039001 00000 n
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How many captive Attwater’s prairie-chickens are there? You may not see the birds when you visit the refuge, but they are here, valiantly struggling to keep their speices alive, with a lot of help from the U.S. 0000030168 00000 n
Chickens are kept by humans to provide eggs, meat, and feathers, however they are also used in religion, mythology and traditional festivals. “And we will . . 0000139372 00000 n
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Females choose the showiest and most impressive mates—one reason prairie-chickens are so ridiculous looking—and they tend to select carefully. Birds are shipped to various breeding facilities in October, and they begin to work themselves up through competition by February. With historic populations numbering close to 1,000,000 birds, it is estimated that less than 100 of these birds are left in the wild. In 1967, the Attwater's Prairie-Chicken was listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Protection Act (the precursor to our modern Endangered Species Act). Spread the word. Today the Attwater’s prairie chicken exists in just two areas, the national wildlife refuge Rossignol manages and a 4,000-acre plot of private land about 120 miles to the southwest. 0000023650 00000 n
The hurricane struck in the middle of the release season, with 249 birds on the ground. 0000141235 00000 n
In springtime, you can hear the booming all the way from the parking lot of the NASA Johnston Space Center in Houston, Texas, where, tucked away from the spaceflight mission control center and moon-rock laboratory, an outdoor pen holds a flock of critically endangered chickens. 0000019940 00000 n
��K���_�TD. Perhaps 80 percent of the birds drowned, young and old alike. You just need some breaks early on to get a toehold, and then things will start to move fairly quickly. A male Attwater's Prairie-Chicken, with its head feathers standing tall, booms early in the morning at its namesake wildlife refuge. The keepers solved the problem by removing the blinders, allowing the birds to see each other and better simulate the competition of the lek. On either side of a covered gravel walkway are two parallel rows of pens, 12 to a side, each holding a pair of chickens—the males conspicuous with their orange air sacs compared to the smaller, muted females. 0000051505 00000 n
A female Attwater's Prairie-Chicken studies its romantic prospects at the NASA breeding facility this July. 0000029363 00000 n
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A lot of people think we ought to be able to snap our fingers and make it all better. Photo: Courtesy of Stephanie Adams/Houston Zoo. And I think it's pretty naive to think you can fix it overnight, too.". They inhabit two separate grassy patches in Texas totaling 12,400 acres (5,018 hectares), the remnants of six million acres (2,428,114 hectares) of coastal prairie that supported as many as a million Attwater’s a century ago. It’s when the birds leave the incubation centers that they start running into trouble. . Loss of habitat is believed to be the prime reason for their decline. In Illinois alone, in the 1800s the prairie chicken numbered in the millions. Photos: Scott Dalton. They began the program by accepting 2 clutches of eggs from wild hens. “When the population gets smaller and smaller, it's more likely that one of those otherwise relatively minor perturbations to the populations will pull it to the point of extinction.". Unfortunately, we’ve had a lot more bad years than we’ve had good years.”, He sighs. 0000005829 00000 n
Earlier in the season they would have come forward for a brief, flurried assignation if they liked what they saw; by May it’s late enough that most have mated, though a few examine the prospects with a critical eye. But endangered species don't get into trouble overnight. 0000039418 00000 n
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They now only live on small … Her current work focuses on the Greater Sage-Grouse. In 1900, as many as a million of the birds ranged along the coastal prairies from the Gulf Bend of Texas and into Louisiana, where every spring the males gathered to dance and boom for female attention. These days it’s even lower. 0000016958 00000 n
Greater Prairie-Chickens have been extirpated from Canada (Hjertaas et al. "People always ask, well, what if this doesn't work?” Bailey says. Greater Prairie-Chickens still thrive on a few areas of 0000034591 00000 n
There’s a name for this kind of run of bad luck, Morrow says: an “extinction vortex,” which is what happens when a species’ numbers drop so low that any setback potentially drags them closer to extinction. There are more whooping cranes than APCs. 0000033345 00000 n
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Fish and Wildlife Service and others. 0000024751 00000 n
Most of the males are busy displaying in the dust as we come in. The Houston Zoo team has a lot of work to do to ensure that future: chicks to release, anthills to treat, private landowners to negotiate with. The National Audubon Society protects birds and the places they need, today and tomorrow, throughout the Americas using science, advocacy, education, and on-the-ground conservation. The 46 birds this year were found as 30 birds at Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge, 2 birds at Texas City Prairie Preserve, and 14 birds at the Goliad County site. There weren’t many prairie chickens left even in those days, Fritzell said. (Prairie-chickens grow fast, so the adolescent birds are generally capable of fending for themselves.) Today fewer than two hundred prairie chickens are left, and saving the species from extinction is an uphill battle. Despite these efforts, the wild population is not growing. 0000033455 00000 n
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See our award-winning documentary, “The Little Grouse on the Prairie”! When zoo staff first began releasing birds back onto the refuge in the 1990s, their chicks—the first wild generation—began turning up dead. In the wild, prairie-chicken breeding is a rough-and-tumble affair, with males gathering in natural arenas called leks to display and tussle for the hens’ edification, working each other up through competition. The average survival rate for wild prairie-chickens, assuming everything goes well, is about 50 percent per year, Morrow says. Project. Left: Attwater's Prairie-Chicken eggs are carefully arranged in one of the Houston Zoo's incubators. There are about 500 eggs here, 60 or 200 to a machine, each … 0000063586 00000 n
Greater prairie chickens are among the most endangered species in Illinois. In 2014, Canada’s Calgary Zoo began a sage-grouse captive-breeding program after consulting with people from the Attwater’s program, and raised 50 chicks in their first year—in part because they didn’t have to start entirely from scratch. %%EOF
Two male prairie-chickens prepare for battle to defend their territory early in the morning at Attwater's Prairie-Chicken National Wildlife Refuge near Eagle Lake, Texas. 0000000016 00000 n
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The Greater Prairie-Chicken (Attwater) is one of many birds in the U.S. Continental Portion of the list. 0000023977 00000 n
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Out in the pens at NASA, the prairie-chicken males are still dancing the old dance, steps they come out of the egg knowing, its rhythm coded in their bones. 0000039860 00000 n
Bald Eagle. 0000034197 00000 n
They were a popular game bird, and like many prairie birds, which have also suffered massive habitat loss, they are now on the verge of extinction, with the wild bird population at around 200 in Illinois in 2019. Legal Notices Privacy Policy Contact Us. The pens are planted with tall grasses so female chickens have places to hide and rest. 0000015274 00000 n
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Mike Morrow, an ecologist at Attwater's Prairie-Chicken National Wildlife Refuge, inspects a critically endangered prairie-chicken that has just arrived at the refuge. He was in bad shape—scalped, feathers bloody and askew—so they took him to the vet for stitches. 0000140377 00000 n
National Audubon Society The refuge hosts the annual Attwater’s Prairie-Chicken Festival, Booming and Blooming Festival, the second weekend in April except when it falls on Easter weekend, then it will be the weekend prior. 0000003703 00000 n
“But we shoot for a survival rate of 75 to 80 percent [of all chicks that hatch], and we've met it many years.”. 0000019072 00000 n
To support our journalism, please make a donation today. It’s one of those things where you’ve got to go home and cry about it one night and get it over with, and then you come back and say: ‘Okay, things are going to line up next year.’”. 0000017756 00000 n
Audubon is a nonprofit, and stories like this are made possible by readers like you. It’s springtime on the prairie, and like most species, Attwater’s prairie chickens are working hard to produce the next generation. 0000023603 00000 n
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The day-old chicks are bouncy and restless—mottled brown-and-yellow balls of down that pop up and down, trying to see over the edge of the towel-lined containers. 0000033236 00000 n
These were raised to become part of the breeding recovery program. Audubon protects birds and the places they need, today and tomorrow. The growth of the captive-breeding program lies in stark contrast to the difficulty the partners have had in bringing that success into the wild. How Noppadol Paothong captured the one-and-only prairie chicken “Sampson” up close. They’ve developed comprehensive guidelines for any institution interested in trying their hand at breeding Attwater’s Prairie-Chickens, and some have used it for related species, too. 0000032245 00000 n
It was listed as endangered in 1967, and by 1996 only 42 birds were left in the wild. Prairie chickens are endangered because the tallgrass prairie has been plowed for farmland and covered by cities. 0000005352 00000 n
“So if you wipe out any gains from reproduction, you're going to see a 50 percent drop in your population every year,” he says. At a week old, they’re transferred into big metal tubs, where they zip around under heat lamps. Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge: Coastal Prairie only 200 left in the wild - See 23 traveler reviews, 18 candid photos, and great deals … 0000042688 00000 n
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(Most birds are released at the refuge; less than a dozen wild prairie-chickens survive on private land in Goliad County down the Texas coast.). Climate change has contributed to a trend of stronger hurricanes on the Gulf Coast, with unhappy results for humans and animal alike. The group is waiting for vans to come pick them up, vans that are driven by wildlife biologists who know where to take the groups to have the best chance of seeing the Attwater’s prairie chickens. What are some of the challenges to raising these birds in captivity? But John Magera, who manages the Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge, is ready to fight. In 1900, up to 1,000,000 Attwater's prairie chickens inhabited the coastal grasslands. “We couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working,” Morrow says. The grouse were over hunted early and hit by habitat loss every year since. 0000039454 00000 n
More than a century ago, up to one million Attwater’s prairie-chickens graced the coastal prairies of Texas and Louisiana. They also have the potential to bounce up. But many don’t get a chance to grow up—and few that do manage to successfully breed in the wild. 1 of 27 Attwater's prairie chickens are named after the 20th century biologist and adoptive Texan, Henry P. Attwater. The program itself has been incredibly valuable as an experimental laboratory for figuring out how to work with grouse, Bailey says. 0000034766 00000 n
Let us send you the latest in bird and conservation news. “It’s difficult to ask someone to put 20 years of their life into something and then say, ‘eh, call it quits.’”. Maybe, just maybe, this year they'll get lucky. After all, this might be the year that everything goes right. 0000017222 00000 n
In 1994, that estimate dropped to 158 birds, and by 1996, only 42 of these rare birds were left. 0000025568 00000 n
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We have breeding facilities both behind the scenes at the Zoo and at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Help power unparalleled conservation work for birds across the Americas, Stay informed on important news about birds and their habitats, Receive reduced or free admission across our network of centers and sanctuaries, Access a free guide of more than 800 species of North American birds, Discover the impacts of climate change on birds and their habitats, Learn more about the birds you love through audio clips, stunning photography, and in-depth text. They have the potential to drop dramatically from one year to another. Like most captive-breeding efforts, the mated pairs are chosen deliberately. It’s hard now to escape the possibility that Attwater’s Prairie-Chickens have simply been pushed too close to the edge. The Houston Zoo began participation in the recovery of the Attwater’s prairie-chicken in 1994. 0000039825 00000 n
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Or take action immediately with one of our current campaigns below: The Audubon Bird Guide is a free and complete field guide to more than 800 species of North American birds, right in your pocket. The refuge attracts the highest number of visitors during the spring, peaking in March and April when wildflowers are abundant. 0000028574 00000 n
. April Zimpel of the Houston Zoo catches an Attwater's Prairie-Chicken in a breeding pen at NASA. 0000023744 00000 n
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Right: A newly hatched Attwater's Prairie-Chicken takes in the world. 0000006839 00000 n
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When Bailey opens up the hatchling incubator, a gaggle of tiny faces bob into view. After two weeks, they transition to outdoor pens behind the building. 0000031306 00000 n
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Consider this your guide to the mating ritual that shapes the lives of a hundred dancing, singing bird species. But zoo staff soon discovered problems with this approach. When the birds hatch and grow large enough, they are slowly introduced and then … Loss of genetic diversity, pesticides, and collisions with manmade structures also pose threats. More than a century ago, up to one million Attwater’s prairie-chickens graced the coastal prairies of Texas and Louisiana. Convincing the birds that the captive-breeding facility is a worthy mating ground has taken some trial and error. <<80148deff27cf34dadd0d392b8c3a53d>]>>
Visit your local Audubon center, join a chapter, or help save birds with your state program. Attwater’s Greater Prairie-Chicken, once common on the Gulf coastal plain from southern Louisiana to Nueces County, Texas, was first affected by shooting and then by plowing and overgrazing of its habitat.
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