Why We Should Care About the NBCI

We recently got an email about a new website – bringbackbobwhites.org – for the National Bobwhite Conservation Initiative (NBCI). Checked it out, looks important but we weren’t sure what it means to hunters. So we asked NBCI communications director John Doty a few questions, here they are with his answers:

SBH: What is the NBCI and why should hunters care about it?

John: The National Bobwhite Conservation Initiative is an effort by 25 state wildlife agencies – and public and private conservation entities – to work together on behalf of a resident game bird facing landscape-scale habitat changes. Decades of each state going it alone haven’t worked.

Twenty-five states have banded together to affect policy, and to generate enthusiasm, momentum, awareness and partnerships at a national, range-wide level to restore populations of wild bobwhite quail.

The new website looks great. Is it a resource for hunters too?

The website is in its first phase and will continually evolve, but even now we hope that anyone wanting to know more about the plight of the bobwhite and other species that occupy the same grasslands/early successional habitats will find something of interest there. We’ll continue to add and try things that we hope will enlarge the site’s audience – for instance, the addition of blogs for each state quail coordinator or small game coordinator who wants one. Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky will likely be first, and Missouri is already represented.

While we mean this as an avenue to keep those interested informed of quail developments and challenges in individual states, I know Virginia’s blogger is an enthusiastic bird hunter and will also be writing about bird hunting in all its forms. So while bringbackbobwhites.org is not a hardcore hunting site, we do believe it has and will have elements which will interest hunters.   

Does the NBCI work with Quail Forever and/or Quail Unlimited?
We work with them, the Quail and Upland Wildlife Foundation, the Texas Quail Coalition and the National Wild Turkey Federation as well as several state-level conservation organizations – because they are the grassroots, boots-on-the-ground constituencies.

They’re members of the National Bobwhite Technical Committee and serve at various times on various subcommittees, steering committees and management boards.

(Photo: balkegallery.com)

What are the top challenges for restoring quail populations and how can hunters help?

The top overall challenge for restoring bobwhites is restoring suitable habitats in massive quantities, whether on grazing lands, forest lands, croplands, mining lands, etc.  Two essential strategies to do that are: a) stop the bleeding, and b) restore degraded habitats.

Even today, federal and state government policies and cultures continue to subsidize – with taxpayer money – and actively promote the unnecessary degradation of quail habitat. For example, they develop and push varieties of invasive exotic vegetation that provide poor habitat but meet certain agricultural purposes, instead of utilizing native species that can do the same agricultural job while providing suitable wildlife habitat.

Not until such habitat losses are contained can we begin the long process of restoration and achieving a sizable net gain of suitable native habitats for bobwhites and grassland birds.

Restoration can be accelerated by two main methods: a) tweaking existing programs, policies and expenditures that currently are neutral or marginal in value for quail, to make them definitely positive – like requiring existing CRP contracts to be converted from unsuitable to suitable habitat before the contracts are re-enrolled for another 10 years; and b) creating new policies and programs to fill quail habitat conservation gaps that currently are not addressed, like needed new capacity to dramatically increase the acreage and frequency of prescribed fire on the landscape, for ecological restoration purposes.

How can hunters help?

An old quail hunter from New Jersey lamented a couple years ago that deer hunters will rise up en masse to protest unwanted changes to deer-hunting regulations, but quail hunters just go away when their sport declines. It’s still the squeaky wheels that get greased.

State wildlife agencies, federal agricultural agencies and others that have immense influence on how land is used and managed face many competing demands. If bobwhite habitat is not one of those demands, it will get neglected.

What’s the number one thing the NCBI would like to see done policy-wise to help quail?

The number one policy priority for quail might be for the US Department of Agriculture to incorporate and seriously embrace wildlife habitat as a co-equal goal (e.g., with soil and water conservation) of all programs, policies and expenditures of all its relevant agencies that influence land uses, especially the conservation programs. It should no longer be acceptable for taxpayer-funded programs to just address soil and water conservation when wildlife conservation could be addressed simultaneously.

What’s the overall goal here – slowing the losing of ground, or actually regaining ground? And what’s the timeline?

Slowing the decline is a natural component of regaining ground, which is certainly the target.

Here’s one of the things that resulted from NBCI: Rather than using habitat suitability models for identifying habitat and potential habitat – those models rely on where bobwhites are present currently to predict what landscapes and management are needed to increase their densities – NBCI utilized biologists’ knowledge to identity habitat types that have the highest biological potential.

For instance, closed-canopy forests which currently lack bobwhites could make significant contributions to bobwhite densities through adequate management, i.e., thinning or creation of open savannas. 

As far as a timeline, it took decades to get where we are and it will take time to recover. A critical element of that is building an actively supportive community across the range, including hunters, private landowners and others.

How to Help

Many of us don’t have the time to help these birds. Luckily organizations are out there that can help for us.

If you’re Serious about helping quail or even all gamebirds, join Quail Forever (Pheasants Forever’s sister organization) and/or Quail Unlimited, which apparently is on the road to recovery. We can’t speak for these organizations, but by joining you should be kept informed of opportunities to make your voice heard to politicians and bureaucrats, to help these wonderful birds.

Really, with all the threats to bird hunting these days – in part stemming from the fact that birds are no longer seen as sexy, cool, fun or whatever the word is to hunt by a majority of hunters – there’s no excuse not to join these organizations.

Category: NBCI, Northern Bobwhite, Quail, Quail Forever, Quail Unlimited