Contact: Bob Ratliff
Some 10,000 Mississippi hunters are expected to take to the field Thanksgiving Day when bobwhite quail season opens.
Ensuring that quail remain a viable game bird in this and other Southeastern states is a major research goal of scientists at Mississippi State's Forest and Wildlife Research Center. Clearly, university avian ecologist Wes Burger and his colleagues will be busy.
"Quail populations have been falling during the past three decades in the Southeast and currently are declining almost four percent each year," said Burger, an associate professor of wildlife and fisheries.
Changes in agricultural and forest practices have been a major factor in tipping the natural balance against the small ground-feeding birds.
"Bobwhite thrive in areas with a mixture of weeds, grasses and shrubs," Burger said. "Thirty years ago, fields of row crops, native grass and annual weeds were well distributed among forested lands, creating a patchy habitat that was perfect for bobwhite quail.
"Today's land use practices, such as increased field size and reduced brushy cover along field borders, have reduced the places where they can prosper, as well as the population size which an area can support."
To counter this trend, Burger and other MSU scientists teamed in 1996 with the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks to study the quail's response to habitat management.
Conducted on the nearly 6,000-acre Black Prairie Wildlife Management Area in Lowndes County, the study used radio-telemetry tracking to monitor the response of quail to habitat changes and to track predators.
"Fall populations of bobwhite have increased from one bird per 13 acres to one bird per two acres in just three years," Burger said. "The results indicate that proper habitat management is the key to increasing quail populations."
The Mississippi findings are being integrated with results from similar collaborative research in Florida, Georgia and Tennessee to provide a more comprehensive picture of regional population processes.
Individual landowners wishing to increase quail populations on their property can use some simple management practices, Burger said.
"Every tract of land is unique," he explained. "There is no fixed formula for quail management, but general practices include the intentional use of fence rows, hedge rows, idle grassy areas and fallow annual weed patches to recreate a complex landscape.
"Periodic disturbance with fire and disking is used to create and maintain weedy and grassy habitats," he added. "Creation around row crop fields of a 10- to 15-foot fallow field border that is disked every three years can enhance quail habitat in agricultural landscapes."
For more information, contact Burger at (662) 325-8782 or wburger@cfr.msstate.edu.