Conservation

Scissor-tailed Nighthar is not globally threatened. This species has a very large geographic distribution, and the population is presumed to be stable in the absence of evidence for any declines or substantial threats (BirdLife International 2014). This species can be rare to uncommon at the periphery of its distribution, but generally is fairly common to common across its range (Belton 1984, Cleere 1998, Gwynne et al. 2010).

Scissor-tailed Nightjar probably is little affected by human activity. It sometimes occurs in urban parks (Sick 1993), and appears to acclimate to human disturbance to some extent (Ingels et al. 1999).