We just returned from the National Bobwhite Technical Committee meeting in Galloway, New Jersey (Thanks Andrew, Jimmy and Joe!!). No, that’s not a mistake. New Jersey.
I learned a lot about the Garden State on our visit. Some facts that might surprise you … New Jersey is one of the most wildlife and habitat diverse states in the lower 48. Habitats there range from coastal plains, wetlands and peat bogs (they are huge producer of cranberries), to upland pine “barrens” and hardwood covered mountains. Cape May New Jersey is known as one of the east coast’s bird watching hotspots. New Jersey also has the densest human and black bear populations in the country and those two ingredients often don’t mix well. And one other thing, in spite of the New Jersey clichés brought on by TV shows The Sopranos and Jersey Shore, you can still find remote areas where quail may thrive again.
This brings me to the efforts ongoing in New Jersey, and it also provides a chance to consider “context” as it relates to quail recovery. We’ve all listened to politicians or TV stars bemoan the misuse of quotes attributed to them. They state, “The words were taken completely out of context.” And we all understand what that means. Clipping a few words out of a three-page statement and using them as an independent quote can relay a totally different meaning than if the words were read within the complete statement.
Simple enough, right? A concept harder for many to grasp is how the landscape context relates to a particular parcel of land’s ability to sustain a quail population.
For example, you own 100 acres of land that you plan to manage expertly for the bobwhite. Your results will vary depending on the landscape context within which your acreage lies. Having 100 acres surrounded by a mixture of row crop farmland, active timber management sites and dozens of other conservation projects suggest that you will have a high degree of success in your quail management.
Those same acres sitting as an island in a sea of mature hardwood forest and fescue pasture will not net you the same return.
Does this mean you should give up in those settings? Not if you are willing to work with neighbors and build landowner cooperatives to package acres into what we have termed a quail quilt, and what the National Bobwhite Conservation Initiative deems a focal area.
The NBCI’s Coordinated Implementation Program is designed to allow multiple states to build focal areas and document success on a wide scale. The basic focal area unit is a 10-square-mile area (6,000 acres approximately) and within that area 25% of the landscape should be useable by bobwhites (1,500 acres). These numbers were derived after much research and debate, and they should be encouraging to all landowners, because with good local leadership you can work to build your own bobwhite conservation area.
New Jersey has one such area under development now. A large corporate landowner (a cranberry producer) set aside 17,000 acres of their lands in central New Jersey and has created quality bobwhite habitat by intensive pine thinning and burning. The landowner is also working with New Jersey Audubon, the New Jersey Division of Wildlife and Tall Timbers Research Station, which is providing habitat assessment expertise as well as trapped and transferred wild bobwhites. That’s right, in the area under study, no remaining wild quail exists to repopulate the area, hence the introduction of wild bobwhites from north Florida.
We are considering developing a similar program in Virginia for landowners in areas where quail have been largely extirpated. Where local leaders can build effective cooperatives and create habitat of sufficient quality and scale, we will consider bringing in trapped and transferred wild bobwhites. The program is under development and requirements will be stringent, as they have been in other states like Georgia and South Carolina. But perhaps this will be the impetus needed to encourage landowners in areas without bobwhites to build the quail quilts needed to developed source quail populations in their areas.
It will take us year or two to work out the details and get the necessary infrastructure in place. The rest is up to you, the private landowner. In Georgia, after nine years of efforts, six properties have been successful and there are nine other properties in six states with projects under development. We’d like to add Virginia to that list.
Last note – we want to congratulate Bob Glennon, one of our five private lands wildlife biologists for being presented the NBCI’s National Fire Bird Conservation Award for Virginia this year. Bob is a retired NRCS program manager with a lifetime of conservation work behind him. He shows no signs of slowing down and he was presented the award for his mentorship and patient teaching of our team. His knowledge of plants is unparalleled. Great work Bob!
