Extinction vortex occurs when demographic, environmental, and genetic stochasticity interact with each other and with deterministic factors, such as habitat quality, to reinforce the demise of a small population. The small population becomes completely unable to recover especially due to lack of genetic variability.
The numbers of-of the prairie chicken population could not be reversed through the management of habitat alone but by a transfusion of genetic variation in the population. This was done to help the species achieve minimal viable population size at which a species is able to sustain its numbers.