I guess my concern about Mt Quail stemmed from an Outdoor Idaho tv show
I saw a few years back that warned of dramatic losses in Idaho and I
wrongly projected that to other parts of the range. After reading some
more, it looks like that species is doing better than I thought.
On 3/3/2016 8:18 PM, Jack Booth wrote:
Joel, Chuck & Delores, The Sage-grouse decline is all about habitat. They need healthy sagebrush with adjacent healthy wet meadow habitat to raise their young. The longterm increase juniper in these habitats is also not beneficial to Sage-grouse. The juniper provides hunting roosts for Sage-grouse predators (raptors) and uses water that supports sagebrush and wet meadow habitat. As juniper increases in good grouse habitat it is no longer good Sage-grouse habitat. If livestock use the wet meadow habitat heavily as the Sage-grouse broods come off the nests there is less cover and they are more vulnerable to predation. Less cover means that coyotes, bobcats, badger, weasels and everything else that would love to eat a baby Sage-grouse will find it easier to prey on them. If the habitat issue is resolved the Sage-grouse will be return. If you fence out the livestock or restrict the early season grazing of the wet meadows the sage-grouse will have better success in raising their broods.
As far as Mountain Quail go in western Oregon go Joel covered it very well. Go Birding and Enjoy, JackOn Mar 3, 2016, at 7:11 PM, Delores Porch <verandafay@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:verandafay@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Joel, I couldn't agree with you more regarding funding wildlife from non hunters. I don't think the issue is that non hunters aren't willing to pay up. There have been several bills offered in the Legislature for several years but they don't make it out of the Natural Resource Committees. Politics, of course. My opinion is that hunters do not want the "lookers" to have money to back up their wants. They will loose their political position. I may be jaded on this issue cause I've worked on it for so many years.
Delores Porch
On Thu, Mar 3, 2016 at 6:19 PM, Joel Geier <joel.geier@xxxxxxxx <mailto:joel.geier@xxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Hi Chuck & All,
This is a great question to raise in the BOO forum. I really hope
that
this forum will turn into a good place for Oregon birders to talk
about
this kind of bird conservation issue, in a reasonably civilized
manner.
I'd like to discuss Mountain Quail and Greater Sage-Grouse
separately,
as I think they're really in different categories.
Starting with Mountain Quail, I'm not convinced that there is a
long-term decline.
West of the Cascades, this species is associated with early-seral
habitats (in other words, regenerating clearcuts), but year-to-year
numbers seem to depend a lot on the weather (dry spring weather
usually
being better for nesting productivity).
The highest Mountain Quail counts (if you look at old CBC data) were
during the 1970s and 1980s logging booms in western Oregon. The
Oakridge
CBC recorded some phenomenal totals during those years, that will
probably never be matched again by anyone, anywhere. We still
find them
in the same situations in the western Cascades and Coast Range, just
thankfully there aren't quite as many "stump pastures." In my view,
numbers are stable.
East of the Cascades, the habitat preferences are a little
different. I
associate them with sagebrush/juniper draws near the juniper-pine
transition. ODFW has introduced (or re-introduced) Mountain Quail in
various places over the past couple of decades. In some places
(such as
Wheeler/Grant County) they seem to have taken hold, but maybe not
everywhere.
Word from Lake County is that the early seral conditions produced by
regeneration from the Winter Ridge fire a few years back has
produced a
good population there. A Lakeview birder tells me that they're also
finding them regularly on the west slope of the Warner Mountains.
So in summary, I'm not nearly as worried about Mountain Quail as I am
about Greater Sage-Grouse.
On Sage-Grouse, I'm guessing that ODFW's calculations have
something to
do with finding revenue for habitat conservation. A certain level of
Sage-Grouse harvest might help to maintain support in the hunting
community, for putting hunting-license revenues into Sage-Grouse
habitat
conservation.
But I think that's a good question to raise -- what's the trade-off
between a certain level of harvest to maintain revenues for
conservation, vs. risk to the species from excessive take?
On the flip side of that issue, I keep having to ask when birders are
going to accept responsibility for funding bird habitat
conservation. We
can't keep complaining about bird hunting, if we can't put forward an
alternative plan.
Good birding,
Joel
* From: Charles Gates <cgates326@xxxxxxxxx>
* To: boo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
* Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2016 12:15:00 -0800
I used to be a hunter. I don't hunt anymore. It's a personal
choice I've
made. My family all still hunt as do several of my friends. I'm not
militant about this issue. But I was very surprised to come
across the
ODFW statistics for Greater Sage Grouse and Mt Quail harvest over the
last 10 years. You can view the statistics yourself at
http://www.dfw.state.or.us/resources/hunting/upland_bird/harvest/index.asp#Statistics.
I really am surprised at the numbers of Mt Quail and Sage Grouse
that are harvested. It's my understanding that both species are
declining. All over Eastern Oregon, ranchers, biologists, land
managers and other interested parties are regularly gathering to
meet and devise mitigation strategies. I guess I naively assumed
a simple way of stopping a population decline is to stop shooting
reproductively viable adults.
--
It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's
what you know for
sure that just ain't so.
Mark Twain
Chuck Gates
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