Kingsville -
It was a much brighter outlook, a glass way over half full kind of scenario, that Dr. Lenny Brennan, quail biologist with the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute, painted for South Texas quail.
He told those attending the recent Quail Short Course hosted by the Institute that the South Texas quail story is something very, very different from what is seen on a continental scale for bobs and blues, and it’s that South Texas story, he insisted, that must be told to the rest of the world.
Before Brennan could expand on the positive side of the story, however, he shared the story that has awakened those in the quail world to a severe and drastic decline in bobwhites across their entire range. Data from the U.S. Fish Wildlife Service’s annual breeding bird survey indicates an annual decline of more than 1.5 percent across much of the U.S.
“We are losing these birds on a grand scale,” Brennan warned. “There are some areas of encouragement,” he added, “but they’re few and far between.”
Brennan also pointed out that the decline of bobwhites didn’t begin in the 1960s but rather most likely started around the turn of the century.
And while Brennan fully believes the need to be in crisis mode, he voiced some concern that these annual surveys, which are nothing more than roadside counts, perhaps do not take into account what’s really happening on the landscape level.
Data gathered from their South Texas Quail Associates program in which landowners collect productivity and harvest data on a landscape scale shows a different story for at least parts of South Texas in recent years. That statement, based on data collected from more than 90,000 wings contributed over an eight-year period, including properties in Webb, Willacy and Starr counties on up to Bee County, indicates all-time highs in terms of productivity based on juvenile to adult age ratios.
“That data illustrates, at least on one level, that this landscape is capable of some very impressive quail production,” Brennan told listeners. “Some of our numbers are off the map; they’re record numbers compared to some of what we’ve seen in the published literature,” he added.
Across the board, these ranches averaged 8.5 juveniles per adult, but last year some reported juvenile to adult ratios of 12 or more to one.
“You can’t get this kind of juvenile/adult ratio without having some really good habitat on the ground,” Brennan stressed.
In terms of hunting and harvest data, these same ranches report finding on average about 4.8 coveys per hour or a covey every 10 to 15 minutes. Extrapolated out, that number translates into a density of well over a bird per acre, perhaps even 1.5 to two birds per acre.
“That's pretty darn good,” commented Brennan.
“Last year Covey Rise newspaper reported that in Mississippi, quail hunters could expect to find .24 coveys per hour. That’s a covey for every four hours of hunting. That’s from a state that, back in the 1980s, killed over two to three million birds a year,” he said.
“That shows you how far things have fallen, and it shows you how lucky we are in this part of the world to find a covey every 12 to 15 minutes when there is good habitat.”
One of the reasons that South Texas is bucking the national trends, Brennan opined, is that more landowners and land managers are doing a better job of maintaining adequate nesting cover through proper stocking rates in conjunction with the right amount of brushy cover. In fact, many properties in South Texas completely destocked for a period of years, and now the conversation in many circles is about having too much grass rather than not enough.
He cited an example of a 40,000-acre ranch east of Laredo that destocked after several years of intensive grazing. After catching a couple of good years of rainfall, in a space of two years that ranch is now “covered up” with blue quail.
Brennan also recently visited a 12,000-acre ranch in Val Verde County that had not been grazed for six or so years, and there, too, scaled quail are on a major comeback.
“It’s quite encouraging.”
Despite the seemingly optimistic outlook, Brennan warned that there are some dark clouds on the horizon, even for South Texas. One challenge in particular that CKWRI researchers have taken on has to do with invasive grasses. Lumped into this category are the Old World bluestems, which Brennan dubbed the “regional equivalent to coastal Bermuda grass,” as well as guineagrass and tanglehead. All of these have long been a part of the South Texas landscape. However, tanglehead, in particular, has exploded in some parts of South Texas, such as eastern Jim Hogg County and western Brooks County, and also to a degree in Kleberg County, to the point that now many consider it to “almost unmanageable.”
Brennan acknowledged that for every action there is a potential reaction, and in the case of tanglehead he hypothesized that it is perhaps a lack of grazing coupled with climatic changes, a shifting of spring rainfall to more summer rains that has allowed tanglehead to explode.
Another potential issue of concern with respect to quail habitat and habitat fragmentation in general has to do with the need for additional roads.
“Even though TTC (the Trans Texas Corridor) is dead for now, I think it’s one of the biggest external threats for maintaining large areas of quail habitat that we have in this part of the world, and it’s something that we need to remain vigilant about,” he warned listeners.
Finally, Brennan pointed to the need to share the South Texas quail story with the rest of the world. He acknowledged the importance of symposia and field days which bring to light what’s been learned and what still needs to be done, but such gatherings, he said, are only effective if that information is taken home and shared with others who are interested in the sustainability of quail.
That led into a brief comment on the ever-emerging Northern Bobwhite Conservation Initiative, a range-wide program focusing on the restoration of quail habitat on a large scale to 1980 quail density levels. Recently CKWRI, along with Audubon Texas, hosted a meeting designed to help move Texas forward with respect to quail conservation.
The two-day workshop, attended by quail biologists, federal and state agency personnel and also landowners and land managers, broke the state down into ecological regions and within those areas focused on finding remaining quail habitat that offers the most potential. The goal is to focus management efforts on these areas and over time expand quail habitat outward from there.
“South Texas is one of the real bright spots for quail on a continental landscape,” Brennan reiterated.
He concluded by encouraging listeners again to help educate the masses.
“We need to help people understand how and why abundant populations are an indicator of a healthy landscape.”
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