Friday, February 01, 2008
Virginia's call to action: Saving the bobwhite quail
State officials launch another effort to reverse the decline of bobwhite quail
Mark Taylor
Mark Taylor's Outdoors column and notebook appears regularly in The Roanoke Times.
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Bobwhite quail were once among the premier game birds in Virginia.
But the small bird with the distinctive song note has fallen on hard times, with populations dropping an estimated 75 percent in the past four decades.
Nowadays, while game species such as the wild turkey and white-tailed deer draw most of the attention from the state's hunters, quail seem to be barely an afterthought.
In 1966, more than 110,000 Virginians hunted quail. Today the number is 10,000.
"And that might be optimistic," said Marc Puckett, who oversees the quail program for the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. "We probably have more like 2,000 enthusiastic quail hunters."
But it's not yet time to give up, say fans of the bobwhite.
"To say that it can go back to the glory days of the mid-1960s, I'm afraid it's not going to happen," Puckett said. "But to say it can be good in some areas, I'm optimistic."
Urged to action by a small but passionate group of quail enthusiasts, including former Governor Linwood Holton, the game department's board at its most recent meeting directed the agency's staff to move forward in developing a Bobwhite Quail Action Plan.
Puckett said the work has started.
In the coming months the agency's staff will meet with stakeholder groups to gauge their thoughts.
Puckett said he hopes the staff can present a plan to the board by the end of the summer.
One advantage the team has is that the primary factor in the quail's decline is no mystery.
Loss of habitat has been the culprit.
Quail require low-lying, messy, brushy undercover nesting and brood habitat. That type of cover, often deemed early successional growth, has been reduced across Virginia and the Southeast for a number of reasons.
For one, farming and timber operations have been become more efficient. Pine stands have been managed to reduce competition from other vegetation, while farmers are able to put crops on more acreage.
"When we're trying to farm every inch of land, or we're grazing every inch of land, and then we put homes on the rest, it can be disheartening," said Jim Inglis, a biologist with Quail Forever, a national conservation group.
Quail enthusiast Steve Bebout has seen it first hand.
"A lot of the old timers in Franklin County, they tell you the places they used to hunt, and there's a house there now," said Bebout, a 48-year-old carpenter from Ferrum.
Reversing the habitat losses will take manpower, time and money.
"It's a tall, tall order," Puckett said.
A budget hasn't yet been developed.
Actions proposed in the agency's previous Bobwhite Quail Management Plan, which was developed in the mid-1990s, required an annual budget of between $800,000 and $900,000
Not all of the money dedicated toward quail plans would have to come from the game department.
Federal funds are available through some programs, such as the CP-33 arm of the Conservation Reserve Program, which pays landowners fees to keep certain areas out of production and put the areas into good quail habitat.
Groups such as Quail Forever and Quail Unlimited are working to raise money and get hunters involved in grass roots projects.
Power companies could help, conservationists point out, by managing right-of-ways for good quail cover.
"There are plenty of quail out there to repopulate if the conditions are right," Puckett said.
As a bonus, good quail habitat can also be good habitat for deer and other popular game bird and animals.
As with the previous quail management plan, a big part of this effort will revolve around education.
Among other things, Puckett envisions efforts to help landowners take advantage of cost share programs, access to areas where good practices are in use and a how-to DVD.
"We want to make sure folks who want to manage for quail," he said, "can do that."
