by the national initiative to directly link population growth to habitat improvements. “We’ll use public lands as anchors for the focal areas within these regions and build out from them with landowner cooperatives. That process has already started and is made easier by the fact that nearly all the individuals that will be involved were part of the original NBCI effort to review and rank the habitat potential of lands. We have strong relationships with them.” In South Carolina that habitat creation will pursue two primary targets. Forested land comprises 65% of the acres categorized as having high or medium potential for bobwhite restoration, followed by agricultural lands at 19%. That means the primary opportunities for recovering South Carolina’s populations will be in forest/woodland savannah creation and management, and farm field management utilizing field borders and conversion of exotic grass pastures to native warm season grasses. “The habitat creation and management aspect is doable through partnerships, and the partnerships will be essential,” asserts Dukes, who is already reaching out
to potential partners, including the National Wild Turkey Federation (NWTF) whose headquarters is in the state. NWTF executed an agreement with NBCI last year to target resources to help selected states with quail focal areas where it would also benefit turkeys. “The challenge will be in doing the proper monitoring of habitat and bird response. That will require manpower and will,” Dukes said. In addition to the focal regions and focal areas, establishing a State Quail Council and a Bobwhite Quail Technical Committee to advise the council, placing biologists in the offices of the federal Natural Resources Conservation Service and rebuilding the Department of Natural Resources’ own internal capacity are also all on the “to do” list. The state, for instance, is expected to hire a full-time quail biologist as part of that capacity. Of course, South Carolina isn’t alone in plummeting numbers of bobwhites … or of other species of grassland and early successional/shrub breeding birds, for that matter. It’s the same across the range. In South Carolina, estimates put the decline in the state at 6.1% annually since 1966 and those losses are attributed directly to the decline in quantity and quality of early successional habitat across the state. Biologists peg current quail density in all upland habitat types in the state at just over 306,000 birds, or 25,512 coveys … or one covey per 499 acres. Current quail density in those areas of the state ranked by NBCI as having “high” or “medium” potential for bobwhite habitat management (9.15 million acres) is estimated at about 279,000 birds or 23,234 coveys … or one covey per 394 acres. NBCI predicts that if prescribed management was applied to all the “high” and “medium” areas over 61,000 coveys would be added, with a resulting density of one covey per 108 acres. The habitat decline isn’t affecting only quail. In fact, thirteen of the 17 species in South Carolina that depend on the same habitat as bobwhites are showing declining trends. And there are similar trends across the bobwhite range. If the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources can rebuild habitat for bobwhites—a resident game bird for which they have specific legal responsibility—the other bird species will simultaneously reap the benefits. You can read the new South Carolina quail initiative, Northern Bobwhite Habitat Restoration in South Carolina: Challenges and Opportunities in the 21st Century, in its entirety on the NBCI website at http:// bit.ly/16LfMlu.
State of the Bobwhite 2013 • 9