The tricolored blackbird does not have any officially recognized subspecies, although there is a population in southern California that may require genetic evaluation.

[2] The tricolored blackbird nests in colonies, but scholars disagree on whether the costs outweigh the benefits of these breeding habits.

Although the tricolor has been able to adapt to some of the landscape changes, habitat loss played a major role in the reduction of its population.

Although population decline was a consequence of agricultural intensification over the twentieth century, the birds were able to use these environmental changes to their advantage.

The 2008 tricolored blackbird census found that nearly half of the total population nested in colonies inside of the grain fields of dairy farms.

There has been a steady decline of the tricolors observed in this region over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with a greater proportion of birds moving to the San Joaquin Valley.

Expanded knowledge of the tricolor’s breeding habits led researchers to increase their survey efforts in locations they suspected housed bird colonies.

Riverside County saw a significant increase in population, and 57% of the tricolors observed in Southern California were in one single colony.

The San Jacinto Wildlife Area in Riverside County had been the site of successful conservation efforts to provide the tricolor with nesting and foraging habitats.

[4] In 1990 the Department of Fish and Game (DFG) of California, based on significant decline in population numbers documented in the 1980s, added the tricolored blackbird to the published list of "Bird Species of Special Concern".

This prompted a petition submitted by the Yolo chapter of the National Audubon Society to the California Fish and Game Commission.

[16] Once the tricolored blackbird was placed on the BirdLife Endangered Species list, it officially became a concern both regionally and nationally.

[17] Beginning in 2015, Audubon California formalized a coalition operation with researchers, dairy groups, and governmental wildlife managers that identified colonies in grain fields, contacting farm owners, and paying them to delay their harvest, with the goal to leave the birds a safe haven until the chicks had fledged.

[16] However the program continued paying farmer owners to delay their harvests in order to maintain amicable relationships between all stakeholders.