On the quail decline

Regarding “Flushing out the quail decline” in the Sept. 15 edition, first, thanks to the editor and Michael Widner for keeping the issue of the quail decline in Arkansas before the public. Where there’s press coverage, there’s hope.

Economics includes the studies of macro (big-picture subjects such as Federal Reserve policy, federal government spending, international trade, et al., that affect gross domestic product), and micro (competition within an industry, profit maximization structure of a business, pricing policy, individuals’ decision-making pertaining to money, et al.). Mr. Widner’s article should be looked at in the macro and the micro.

The bulk of his argument regarding the loss of habitat is in the macro environment witnessed by his citing, “All we have to do … is to reverse the landuse practices of the last three generations on 30 million acres.” No argument there. I can, as he did, give multiple examples of areas with habitat that held birds and now those same tracts without habitat do not.

But in the micro view, he misses. Talk to landowners who live there. Many will say, as I do: “I have suitable habitat … enough of it, and no quail. What I do have is a pockmarked tract full of burrows made by nocturnal ground predators. And they all eat my ground-nesting bird eggs.” That’s one of the main micro reasons for the decline in quail.

Private landowners will not change from fescue fields as long as raising cattle is profitable. But the Game and Fish Commission can. It can dedicate part of its wildlife management areas to quail habitat starting today. No “public/private partnership” needed. Further, instead of spending multimillions on another (wasted) visitor education center, pay a bounty on nocturnal ground predators in suitable counties that still have habitat, and on their WMAs. Try it for five years. And don’t run scared of PETA. Game and Fish has lawyers, too.

To restore the grand and magnificent sport of hunting wild quail with bird dogs in our beloved state, it will take macro and micro solutions.

DAVE JOHNSON Fayetteville