This state's classification carries no date range for the species.
State-endangered, native species.Population collapsed from an estimated ~10 million statewide in 1860 to roughly 40 birds by 1994; remnant population now survives only at Prairie Ridge State Natural Area (Jasper/Marion counties) under intensive IDNR conservation management, including inbreeding-mitigation relocations from other Midwest states. No legal hunting season exists.
Greater prairie-chicken is state-endangered in Illinois with no hunting season (no open season). The population collapsed from an estimated 10 million statewide in 1860 to roughly 40 birds by 1994, and the sole remaining population survives under intensive IDNR conservation management, including inbreeding-mitigation relocations of birds from other Midwest states, at exactly one site: Prairie Ridge State Natural Area, split across two named booming-ground units in Jasper and Marion counties. IDNR's own Prairie Ridge site manager (Bob Gillespie), writing in Outdoor Illinois Journal, put the Jasper County unit at roughly 52 male greater prairie-chickens and the Marion County unit at about 18 males, describing the Marion unit specifically as precarious due to habitat loss and unfavorable weather (May 2022 figures, the most recent published; they illustrate an ongoing spring lek-monitoring program rather than current-year counts). This is a closed-season, non-huntable population, but a real, precisely documented one. The region answer is not a hunting recommendation.
IDNR/Illinois Natural Heritage monitor the sole remnant population (Prairie Ridge State Natural Area, Jasper/Marion counties) via spring lek (booming-ground) counts, continuing despite the species being state-endangered and fully closed to hunting. Publication is irregular feature-article coverage rather than a fixed annual report: the most recent available figures are from the site manager's May 2, 2022 article (52 males, Jasper County unit; 18 males, Marion County unit), with no newer figures published since.
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