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Buffer with native grasses |
Media:Please credit the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission. |
Bobwhite quail, once prolific throughout the Southeast and Midwest, have declined precipitously over the past several decades. Just in the last 25 years, populations have dropped 60 percent nationwide, according to federal data. The cause appears to be loss of early-successional habitat — the weeds, shrubs and wildflowers that grow after a natural disturbance such as fire or storms. These scrubby vegetation types provide food, cover and nesting habitat, but they have declined due to modern farm techniques, urbanization and reforestation.
The Wildlife Commission for years has worked to rebuild quail populations by restoring lost habitat. Through the Cooperative Upland-habitat Restoration and Enhancement program, or CURE, the Commission works with private landowners on three pilot cooperatives and with managers of public lands to provide the early-successional habitat that quail and other small animals need.
The new federal program provides a powerful tool for quail restoration efforts. Its intent is to reduce the impact on wildlife of “clean farming”— a common agricultural method that eliminates fallow fields, weedy ditches and transitional areas between field and forest that were a normal part of the farm landscape before modernization.
“The ‘bobwhite buffers’ initiative has the potential to add thousands of habitat acres to our rural landscape — much more than we could have done on our own,” said Terry Sharpe, the Commission’s agricultural liaison biologist.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, working through local Farm Service Agency offices, will enroll up to 250,000 acres nationwide for the Northern Bobwhite Quail Habitat Initiative. North Carolina has been designated for 11,300 acres — more than any other state in the Southeast.
“I think our high acre allocation in this new federal program is an affirmation that we are on the right track with our quail restoration efforts,” Sharpe said.
The initiative is part of the USDA’s Conservation Reserve Program, which compensates farmers who set aside sensitive areas to protect water quality and other environmental assets. Although landowners are not required to plant the buffers, they must agree to manage the enrolled acres periodically in order to prevent tree encroachment.
Enrollment began Oct. 1. To be eligible, the buffers must be adjacent to row crop land with active cropping history for four of the six years from 1996 to 2001. Annual rental payments are based upon soil fertility and local established rental rates. Compensation includes a one-time signing bonus of about $100 per acre enrolled, an annual maintenance payment of $5 per acre and a management payment of up to $100 per acre over the 10-year lifetime of the agreement.
The Commission is reaching out in particular to landowners in the Coastal Plain, where the initiative has the most potential to benefit bobwhites. Interested landowners should contact a Farm Service Agency office and ask for enrollment applications for practice CP33, Habitat for Upland Birds.
