Arkansas Sportsman

State quail habitat: If you build it, they will come

Quail have been a third-tier game species in Arkansas for so long that restoring bobwhites is almost like starting from scratch.

Fortunately, we can draw from a wealth of experience in neighboring states to make the Natural State landscape once again hospitable for a native bird that is as beautiful to hear as it is fun to hunt.

"We" because private landowners are ultimately be responsible for the success or failure of restoring a relevant amount of native grasslands upon which quail rely.

It starts with habitat. Provide ample amounts of quality habitat and bobwhites will prosper, as will a host of other native non-game birds and insects that specialize to native grasslands.

That appears to be a greater burden than many landowners are willing to shoulder, which is why commentators lately have attempted to blame everything but habitat for the dearth of quail.

Some blame it on feral hogs, including a frequent correspondent who recently opined that reintroducing wolves and mountain lions to Arkansas would reduce the numbers of small predators that eat quail.

Another correspondent recently suggested that eyeworms might be to blame.

The life cycles of short-lived animals that are far down the food chain are attritional. In ideal conditions, only 20 percent of a year class of quail will survive to adulthood. If populations are depressed, then external factors like predation and disease can amplify mortality.

If, on the other hand, you create conditions that lead to an abundance of quail, they can overcome external factors through sheer numbers. That essentially summarizes all wildlife management.

If we accept that wildlife management is a science, then the science is indisputable. The scientific community unanimously acknowledges the link between quail and habitat.

Scott Cox is the quail biologist for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation. Quail hunting is as important to Oklahoma as duck hunting is to Arkansas, and the ODWC produced the most comprehensive quail mortality study in existence in the 1990s at its Packsaddle Wildlife Management Area. I worked there while the Packsaddle study was in progress, and the biologist that conducted it, Steve DeMaso, was a close friend and a quail hunting mentor.

The Sooner State has experienced sharp declines in quail populations over the past few decades, though not as precipitous as Arkansas.

During the 2014-2015 seasons, about 26,000 quail hunters in Oklahoma killed about 300,000 quail. That's about a 60 percent drop from the 1970s and 1980s, when more about 100,000 hunters killed more than 1 million quail annually.

By comparison, our record year for duck hunting participation in Arkansas was 2013-2014, when the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission sold more than 97,000 resident and nonresident duck hunting licenses.

Oklahoma's decline was habitat related, too, but landowners are starting to turn that around, partly thanks to the drought that gripped the western part of that state for many years. Vast acreages of exotic grasses died, and ranchers had to spend a lot of money importing feed.

"A lot of landowners in western Oklahoma recognize the problems with monoculture and are trying to convert a lot of that country back over to native," Cox said. "The drought also taught them a pretty good lesson about how much to graze. Some landowners I talked to are trying to plan ahead so they don't run into big problems with weather extremes."

Landowners are also removing large numbers of eastern red cedars which are detrimental to grassland species.

T. Boone Pickens's property in western Oklahoma is a textbook example for quail management.

"He's got birds everywhere because he's got diverse habitat," Cox said. "There's everything for quail, so there's quail. Eyeworms and coccidiosis aren't a problem there. If you have big quail acreages, there'll be quail."

Eyeworms, hogs and hawks riled Cox up a bit. It's a sleight of hand to mask habitat problems. Quail need 2,000 unfragmented acres in Oklahoma, he said. In Arkansas, the number is about 1,000.

"People want to come up with a magic theory," Cox said. "Yeah, eyeworms will affect the flight of a few birds, but for the overall population, habitat fragmentation is the problem. Look at the decline of monarchs [butterflies]. It ain't eyeworms in monarchs. It's loss of prairie flowers and wildflowers.

"Quail have been declining in upland shrub areas, but so have painted buntings and bluebirds. Eyeworms and pesticides are subplots, but the biggest reason is habitat and how it's managed."

Sports on 07/26/2015

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