Shell’s Covert

(Quail Grunts)

August 2011

For many of us in Virginia it's hard to believe that as of July 1, 2011 we began the third year of implementing our latest Quail Recovery Initiative. We have two eventful years and many accomplishments behind us. Our newest quail team is pictured below.

 

 

Photo Credit: Allen Boynton – VDGIF 

Left to right (standing): Bob Glennon, Jay Howell, David Bryan, Andy Rosenberger, Marc Puckett, (kneeling) – Katie Martin, Debbie Wright, Galon Hall.

 

All of our partners (partnerships – the first key to success), including the hundreds of private landowners who have done more than “talk the talk,” are indispensible to quail recovery in Virginia. There are several key partners that deserve special thanks:

The federal Natural Resources Conservation Service, both in enabling the initiative to hire and support five private lands wildlife biologists, and in continuing to offer financial incentives through the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program (WHIP), is a “diamond” partner.

So is the Conservation Management Institute at Virginia Tech, without which the private lands biologists positions would not exist (or our VQC and QMAP list serves).

Add to this list the six Virginia Association of Soil and Water Conservation Districts (SWCDs) through which we offer the Wildlife BMP program (Big Walker, Chowan Basin, Culpeper, Halifax, Headwaters, and Three Rivers) and their supporting agency, the Department of Conservation and Recreation.

These partners form the backbone of the quail initiative.

And so many others contribute significantly to what has become the body of the Virginia quail initiative. These include: The US Forest Service, Dominion – Virginia Power, the Wildlife Foundation of Virginia, Virginia Dept. of Forestry, the Farm Services Agency, Appalachian Mountains Woodcock Initiative, Quail Unlimited, Quail Forever, the Ruffed Grouse Society, the Department. of Mines, Minerals and Energy, Virginia Cooperative Extension, Virginia Tech College of Natural Resources and the Environment, The National Wild Turkey Federation, the Virginia Chapter of The Wildlife Society, American Electric Power, River Birch Farm, Reese Farms,  Virginia Trappers Association, US Army Corps of Engineers, the National Audubon Society, Ward Burton Wildlife Foundation, and the Virginia Dept. of Game and Inland Fisheries.

Of the team pictured above, five are our private lands wildlife biologists (David Bryan, Bob Glennon, Katie Martin, Andy Rosenberger and Debbie Wright). They are the true force behind our QRI – the “unsung heroes” without whom implementing the quail initiative would be ineffective.

PLWB Activity Summary By Fiscal Year (June 30 to July 1).

Fiscal year	Site Visits	New Contacts	Management plans	Outreach Sessions	New Habitat acres	Total farm acres
2010	251	235	104	47	1168	21,080
2011	540	406	270	160	5,354	81,972
Total	791	641	374	207	6,522	103,052

The number of site visits alone shows how much effort these biologists are putting into the QRI (note: in FY 2010 – the private lands wildlife biologists were only on staff for 6 months). This does not reflect the hundreds of threatened and endangered species reviews, and comments and assistance on other USDA projects they provided.

In looking at these numbers, ask yourself – “can there be any doubt about what is needed to bring back an early-successional species?”

The only way to truly effect change on the scale necessary to restore wildlife populations is to recognize that you need an army of highly qualified, motivated, dedicated biologists who can be given the opportunity to focus on private lands assistance. In many states, if you could manage every acre of state and federal lands perfectly, they would still not add up to statewide species recovery (though they may indeed serve the role of being ideal wildlife source population areas and provide valuable hunting and viewing opportunities).

Several other things are critical – but remember these next ones mean nothing without a delivery team of private lands wildlife biologists. (Don’t believe me – just advertise a program beyond your means to deliver follow through on landowner interest sometime.) The first is outreach to the masses. The popular comedian Jay Leno often does a segment on his show where he goes outside and asks passers-by some pretty basic questions about history, politics, etc. The resulting lack of knowledge is often hilarious (and quite scary). But it troubles me that most Americans, when asked if they’d heard a bobwhite, might respond “I worked with a guy named Bob White a few years ago.” Or perhaps, “Heard Bob who?” We need a “Smokey the Bear”- level campaign on a national level to elevate the value of “weeds and brush” and to link the value of these habitats to things that maintain healthy ecosystems ... like pollinating insects.

The next ingredient is time. Lots of time ... and perseverance.

The most difficult thing about time is that some species do not have a lot of it left. And trying to maintain a program’s funding for long enough to allow it a fighting chance to work is tremendously difficult and draining on those who do it. Faith helps. Regardless what you may believe religiously speaking, there is a certain faith involved with waking up each morning in the face of long odds and simply taking that first step, and then the next one – you reach a point sometimes where you wonder “does any of this matter? Am I where I should be, doing what I’m meant to do?”

My only answer is this: “you are until you are somewhere else – work with faith.” And like the old saying says “do something, even if it is wrong.” Staff Sergeant Nantz (USMC), in the soon to be classic (to me anyway) “Battle: Los Angeles” says to his commander “I’ll follow you anywhere sir, but go left or go right, I don’t care which, just make a decision.”

Monitoring is important, too, for many reasons. Documenting success is impossible without monitoring, and maintaining momentum for species recovery is impossible without some success. Monitoring also identifies what is not working.

Colonel Hal Moore (US Army Retired  1^st Air Cavalry – Vietnam, “We Were Soldiers” author) writes on leadership - the most basic tenet is to ask yourself two questions every day: “what am I not doing that I should be doing, and what am I doing that I need to stop doing?” to influence the situation in our favor.” The only caution on monitoring – it should not become the end game – on a scale, habitat creation and outreach has to outweigh time spent monitoring.

Some in our business, in my humble opinion, seem content to monitor declines and conduct surveys. Entire careers can be built around flying from state to state, or country to country, documenting species declines and writing papers about it. And I have to ask, “how many graduates of major university wildlife programs have the skills necessary to effectively communicate with private landowners, understand financial assistance programs, or at least know they exist and know what USDA stands for, and have any knowledge of outreach at all?” For every course on statistics required, two more should be required in human relations and outreach. (Some of these issues were raised and addressed in a recent issue of The Wildlife Professional – these comments are my feelings garnered from 15 + years working for a state wildlife agency, and any closeness to those in the TWP are unintentional.)

Science is crucial to all management. But the science has to be applied, and its application is not always glamorous. Being a private lands biologist involves many rewarding days in the field with landowners, but few actually working with the critters. And for every day in the field, there may be one in the office writing management plans or completing the paperwork necessary to enroll landowners in conservation programs.

I was in the infantry when in service. Those in the infantry are known as “grunts” – the term needs no explanation. All the work is important, but someone has to do the grunt work. There was a pride among grunts as among no others (in my humble opinion). “Grunts, they’re the best I’ve ever seen Grandma. They come from all over, places where no one cares about them or has never heard of them. But they can take it. A grunt can take anything,” says Charlie Sheen’s character Chris Taylor in “Platoon” – Best Picture 1986.

Our private lands wildlife biologists represent the “grunts” of the quail world, without whom no amount of outreach or research will ever “bring back Bob.”