New management emphasis benefits quail Work on conservation areas statewide aims to "Bring back Bob." JEFFERSON CITY--"Bring Back Bob," the rallying cry for bobwhite quail restoration efforts, is fast becoming more than a slogan in Missouri. Around the state, private landowners, often with help of government and citizen conservation groups, are discovering how they can hasten the popular game bird's recovery. Efforts to enhance quail habitat on public land are shifting into high gear also. "More than 90 percent of the state's land is privately owned," said Wildlife Ecologist Elsa Gallagher, who leads the Missouri Department of Conservation's quail restoration effort. "Any program to restore quail is going to succeed or fail there. However, lots of hunters' only option is public land. The conservation areas (CAs) that dot the state are an important part of quail restoration, particularly for those hunters." Luckily for hunters, the Conservation Department has dozens of areas capable of sustaining sizeable quail populations. Since signing onto the Northern Bobwhite Conservation Initiative last year, the agency has aggressively pursued efforts to restore quail habitat on its land. Quail thrive wherever their habitat needs are met. Those needs include: |
A machine capable of clipping
off 8-inch trees as if they were saplings and stacking them in neat
brushpiles is one of the tools being used in Missouri's bid to bring
back the bobwhite quail. |
It isn't enough to "protect" quail habitat. Land that is left undisturbed quickly loses the diverse habitat elements that quail need. Maintaining these elements requires periodic disturbance of existing vegetation. The disturbance can be light disking, judicious grazing or prescribed burning.
The habitat elements most likely to be in short supply on conservation areas are escape cover and brood-rearing areas. Conservation Department workers are using familiar tools and specialized new equipment to ensure these are maintained.
The familiar tools include chainsaws and axes. These are most useful in areas where large trees and thick growth make using heavy equipment impractical. With thousands of acres of conservation areas to maintain, the Conservation Department uses a more mechanized approach where possible to get faster results.
Two pieces of equipment that are particularly useful make the rounds of conservation areas each year. One is the "shear blade," a wedge-shaped 8-foot, serrated steel cutter mounted on a bulldozer just above ground level. Running this implement through an old field choked with woody sprouts accomplishes in a few minutes what a crew of several people with hand tools would need hours or days to do. This tool is especially useful for making fields accessible to other equipment needed to eradicate undesirable cool-season grasses.
The most impressive mechanical wonder at wildlife managers' disposal is a "clipper" that grasps trees up to 14 inches in diameter by the trunk, snips them off at ground level and arranges them into brush piles. This is an excellent tool for removing trees from large areas that once were savannahs. Brush pile construction goes much faster with a tool that can cart whole trees around like saplings. Mechanization is helping the Conservation Department treat miles of forest edge and hundreds of acres of old fields in each of the state's regions annually.
Another way of getting the job done is to conduct "chainsaw days," when 10 to 15 workers converge on an area and tackle projects too big for the local staff. An example is "edge feathering" to soften the edge between fields and surrounding woods. This creates 30-foot borders with brush piles and shrubby growth. Such transition zones between forest and open land is especially beneficial to quail.
Doing this work by hand, rather than with the tree clipper makes it possible to build brush piles around trees that are felled with the trunks still connected to stumps. Some trees cut this way survive, and the living brush piles they form can last longer and provide better wildlife cover.
Areas where quail habitat work is under way include:
--Lamine CA in Morgan and Cooper counties;
--Whetstone Creek CA in Callaway County;
--Davisdale CA in Howard County;
--Scrivner Road CA in Cole County;
--Frost Island and Fox Valley CAs in Clark County;
--Deer Ridge CA and Sunnyside School Access in Lewis County;
--Indian Hills CA in Scotland County;
--Henry Sever Lake CA and White Oak Bend Access in Knox County;
--Lone Jack and Jim Bridger Urban CAs and James A. Reed Memorial Wildlife
Area (WA) in Jackson County;
--Amarugia Highlands CA in Cass County;
--Settle's Ford CA in Bates and Cass counties
--Ranacker CA in Pike County
--Locust Creek CA in Sullivan County
--August A. Busch Memorial and Weldon Spring CAs in St. Charles County
--Columbia Bottom CA in St. Louis County
--Kessler Memorial WA and William R. Logan CA in Lincoln County
--Land around Stockton Lake in Cedar, Polk and Dade counties
--Bethel Prairie, Buffalo Wallow, Dorris Creek Prairie, Redwing Prairie and
Pa Sole Prairie CAs in Barton County
--Treaty Line Prairie CA in Bates County
--Bois D'Arc CA in Greene County
--Robert E. Talbott CA in Lawrence County
--Capps Creek CA in Newton County
--Maintz Wildlife Preserve in Cape Girardeau County
--Apple Creek CA in Perry County
--Crowley's Ridge CA in Stoddard County
--Schell-Osage CA in Vernon and St. Clair Counties
--Four Rivers CA in Bates and Vernon counties
--Douglas Branch CA in Vernon County
--Connor O. Fewel WA in Henry County
--The Deepwater Creek, Grand River Bottoms and Bethlehem areas of Truman Lake.
Gallagher noted that habitat-enhancement efforts geared to increasing quail numbers also benefit a wide variety of other wildlife species. The needs of cottontail rabbits, another favorite of hunters, are almost identical to those of quail. Lots of non-game species also share the bobwhite's habitat preferences. Loggerhead shrikes, Henslow's sparrows, field sparrows, grasshopper sparrows, dickcissels, bobolinks, meadowlarks, yellow-breasted chats, brown thrashers, prairie warblers and fence lizards all thrive under the same conditions.
"The work we are doing for quail is benefiting a wide range of species whose numbers have dwindled over the past 50 years," said Gallagher. "Missouri's participation in the Northern Bobwhite Conservation Initiative will have positive consequences that extend far beyond hunters."
- Jim Low -
