Safe Homes Sought for Prairie Birds in Peril : Research: Oklahoma center helped save heroic species from extinction. Now it seeks scratch to keep less glamorous varieties alive.

Each day, in summer’s smothering heat or winter chill, a small army of bird-watchers roams 800 acres of Oklahoma outback to check on the “barometers of our environment.”

That is how Steve Sherrod describes Southwestern prairie birds, which are vanishing.

Sherrod is the director of the George Miksch Sutton Avian Research Center. The center won a measure of acclaim some years ago for its part in repopulating American bald eagles across the Southeast--a project so successful that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to remove the bald eagle from the endangered species list.

Now, the nonprofit Sutton center, named for a prominent ornithologist and bird artist who died in 1982, describes itself as endangered.

“The bottom line is, we need money,” a desperate Sherrod said.

Although his current five-year project of tracking prairie birds is more important, he says, it lacks the glamour of the eagle project. That cause--saving the national symbol--stirred patriotic juices and opened the pocketbooks of contributors.

Blaming a decline in private and federal funding, Sherrod earlier warned that unless the Sutton center raised $250,000 quickly it could shut down. But in mid-August, Sherrod said the $250,000 had been raised and would keep the center open another year.

Sherrod credited Bartlesville rancher and businessman Kenneth Adams, saying Adams “made a substantial challenge grant and started the ball rolling.”

He said “Eagles” singer Don Henley, who has been involved in environmental work for two decades, also helped the center reach its goal.

“The best I can tell you, we are exploring every opportunity possible. Every nickel counts,” he said.

The center’s researchers, in the late 1980s, were among the first to successfully fool wild eagles to “double-clutch,” or lay a second set of eggs, by climbing to the massive nests and stealing the first eggs.

Those fist-sized eggs were returned to Sutton to hatch in incubators, where handlers turned them every three hours to keep embryos from sticking to the shells. A week after the eaglets emerged, workers used a hand puppet for feeding behind one-way glass. In all, 275 fledglings were released in Florida, Mississippi and other Southeastern states.

The work of tracking prairie birds is a bit more gritty.

It entails fending off chiggers and fiddleback spiders and ticks that sometimes infect researchers with Rocky Mountain spotted fever. It also requires competing with other environmental groups--and other causes--for the elusive dollar.

Major contributors and environmentalists who worked closely with Sutton were shocked when the center announced its crisis.

John West of the Phillips Petroleum Foundation, which gave the center $25,000 in March, heard about Sutton’s money problems from reporters. So did Steve Torbit, senior scientist with the National Wildlife Federation in Boulder, Colo., who describes Sutton’s eagle work as “marvelous.”

Erich Langer, public outreach coordinator in Oklahoma for the Fish and Wildlife Service, unequivocally praises Sutton’s biologists. But asked about its accounting and finances, he said bluntly: “That’s a different story.”

Sutton asked for $65,000 this year from Fish and Wildlife but received only $4,400. Most of Sutton’s money comes from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation in Washington and the nonprofit Sarkey’s Foundation in Norman.

“It kind of floored us. None of us expected any of that to happen,” Langer said. “We know it’s difficult running a place like that. I just wish we would have known something a little earlier. It’s like, geez, if you don’t get the money in a month and a half. . . . “

The semipublic Fish and Wildlife Foundation gave the center $275,000 in matching money this year to study prairie birds, according to foundation director Amos S. Eno. Tax records show it gave $294,405 last year.

Sarkey’s gave the center $200,000 this year and more than $1.2 million since 1983, executive director Cheryl Cartwright said. But Sutton can spend only the interest earned on that endowment.

Eno says federal funding for Sutton dwindled as the eagle project ended. But, he asks, why isn’t Sutton targeting groups for money outside Oklahoma? Sutton recently was approved as one of only four California condor breeding centers, and the prairie bird project affects Plains states from Texas to North Dakota.

Some Sutton executives insist the center has looked away from its traditional contributors in Oklahoma, but without much luck.

“We’ve targeted some chemical companies in the Midwest. So far, other than an initial reaction, we haven’t been able to get very far,” said John Barker, a Tulsa attorney who is on Sutton’s board of directors.

“More and more companies are shifting toward human problems--homelessness and hunger,” he said. “In some respects, we’re chasing similar dollars.”

Said board member John Brock, an independent Tulsa oilman: “Foundations are short of money these days. We’re having a tough time finding anybody who’s interested.”

Sherrod says lack of money could mean abandoning studies that already are years old.

“We’re trying to complete the third year of a five-year study,” Sherrod said. “If you cut them off in the middle, it’s like cutting the guy open and operating, then saying, ‘Oh, we’ve run out of money. We can’t sew you back up.’ ”