They’re clamorous and colorful emblems of the Southwest. Pinyon jays – once known as “blue crows” – live in colonies of scores or hundreds of birds. They communicate in brassy cries, and like their crow and raven kin, they’re intelligent creatures. Pinyon jays are occasional West Texas residents – in 2023, flocks wintered in the Davis and Guadalupe mountains.
Their populations have declined by 80 percent in the last 50 years, and in 2022, Defenders of Wildlife petitioned for their listing as an endangered species. That’s prompted new consideration of the habitat on which the birds rely: the pinyon-juniper or “PJ” woodlands. Now, scientists are studying the genetics of this ecosystem, from Nevada to West Texas.
U.S. Geological Survey scientist Carla Roybal is spearheading the genetic study.
“The result is over 9,000 individual tissue samples,” Roybal said, “so 9,000 trees of both pinyon and juniper. We're really excited to analyze those and see what we learn.”
PJ woodlands are the Southwest’s dominant forest type, covering 100 million acres here. Pinyons typically top out at 20 feet – and alongside diverse junipers, they thrive in dry, rocky places where Ponderosas, firs and aspens can’t make it.
To understand these woodlands, and support their conservation, Roybal and her colleagues collected samples from across their range. Next, they’ll study the plants’ DNA.
“The goal with our research is to inform how these populations change across the landscape,” Roybal said. “Do we see any genetic similarities across the landscapes that might allow certain populations to survive better under certain conditions? Do we think that one population might be able to persist as things get hotter and drier, for example?”
One pinyon species – Pinus cembroides – is found in the Davis and Chisos mountains and south through Mexico’s Sierra Madre. Pinus edulis dominates the Four Corners – the heart of the pinyon jay’s range.
Through development, wildfire, drought and beetle infestations, Pinus edulis woodlands are contracting. Those woodlands may not regenerate on their own in a drying climate. For land managers seeking to replant, it’s critical to know which seeds are most likely to survive amidst hotter, drier conditions.
The Guadalupe Mountains are the southeastern limit of Pinus edulis – and Roybal’s collaborators collected in Guadalupe Mountains and Carlsbad Caverns national parks. They’ll look at genetic markers – to understand if pinyons here are particularly drought-adapted.
Seeds from these Chihuahuan Desert trees could help restore the woodlands elsewhere.
PJ woodlands have long been regarded as “less desirable” than open grazing lands or montane forests. But these woodlands cast their own spell. They can be dense thickets, but they also create open, savannah-like parklands – a kind of desert-mountain Elysium.
Roybal said that, for her, a byproduct of the study has been developing a new intimacy with this ecosystem.
“And so it’s all very subtle and just something that you calibrate when you spend a lot of time paying attention to one specific thing,” she said, “which felt like such a privilege to be able to do with this project because I feel like in our lives we don’t often have that, and especially not with something like a landscape. So it was really cool.”
Pinyon jays rely on pinyon seeds. But those tasty “nuts” and the pine’s aromatic smoke are also touchstones for human communities. Both pinyons and junipers have long been food and medicine for Native peoples. And these woodlands shape the beauty of the West Texas mountains.
Not only the jays, but all those who live in or love the desert-mountain West have a stake in the future of these woods.
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