In recent years, fracking has surged in western North Dakota’s Bakken region—the area had just 200 active oil wells in 2005 but today more than 10,000 churn out approximately 35 million barrels of oil every month. The extraction comes with a price: The grasslands where those oil wells sit are a delicate and threatened ecosystem and the construction isn’t boding well for the birds that live there, according to recent research conducted by U.S. Geological Survey. “There’s a lot that’s unknown about [fracking’s effect on] the Bakken,” says Sarah Thompson, a USGS scientist. “It’s new and it’s happening really quickly.” From 2012 through 2014 Thompson and her team surveyed 1,900 acres of land spread across seven counties in northwest North Dakota, counting and identifying any birds they observed in the transformed landscape. Fracking has turned the flat, formerly green expanses of North Dakota into a patchwork of deep red gravel well pads. Each pad is...