[music]
- NARRATOR:
on the furthest fringe of Big Bend country,
Bonnie McKinney and Robert Perez are out to capture some birds.
- BONNIE: May be a little early.
Oh there's one right there and one right there.
[music]
- BONNIE: There's tons of tracks.
We've been trapping birds at Candelaria, Texas.
- ROBERT: There's one right there.
- NARRATOR:
a species found across the desert Southwest.
- ROBERT: Once you get into New Mexico and Arizona
the species becomes much more common,
but in our state, it's very limited.
- NARRATOR:
further east, where they were once also found.
While Gambel's have fared better than some,
every quail species in the state has lost some ground.
[music]
- ROBERT: There are four species of quail in Texas:
the Montezuma quail, the Gambel's quail,
the scaled quail, also called blue quail,
and the bobwhite.
[bobwhite call]
Certainly the most popular and well known species
is the bobwhite quail.
- NARRATOR:
- ROBERT: Over the last twenty to thirty years we've seen
serious declines across its entire range, including Texas.
Fundamentally, conservationists agree that the root cause is
changes in the quality and quantity of habitat.
- NARRATOR:
native habitat has brought conservation groups
and private landowners together,
at the Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge.
- Nice to meet you guys, I'm Robert.
- It's real exciting to see this group of folks
and private landowners just come together
for a common cause.
[prairie chicken booms]
Both of these birds as well as other grassland bird species
require this prairie habitat.
- NARRATOR:
seeds and insects for birds, but that's not all.
- This is a sample of a native grass.
This plant contributes to the health of the land.
This is the way you conserve moisture.
Man has come in and ripped out a lot of this native grass
and planted what we call improved grasses,
which is really not improved, they're invasive species,
like Bermuda grass, and Bahia grass,
and they don't give back to the soil.
They take from the soil.
- NARRATOR:
lost, seed is harvested from a tall grass prairie
at the Attwater Refuge.
[tractor running]
- JIM: Well obviously the best seed to have is to have
local ecotypes.
Because if it grows here, it's going to grow down the road.
Out here it's little bluestem that's your target plant.
We found out that we couldn't do it alone.
To have more birds, you had to have connectivity.
You had to have one ranch attached to another to another.
And now we're working with landowners that represent
around 30,000 acres, and about 10 counties.
[harvester dumps seed]
- We know from years and years of research,
and it's a very well-researched bird,
we know that habitat's the key.
- NARRATOR:
seeding as well as managed grazing and prescribed fire,
not just bobwhite benefit.
[birds call]
- JON: In general, grassland birds in North America have been
declining over the past 50 years or so
and it's because of loss of large scale habitat
in big landscapes.
We can produce quail, we can produce habitat that
makes more birds.
We just need more of it.
- NARRATOR:
of quail needs some habitat help-the scaled, or blue quail.
- ERIC GRAHMANN: Scaled quail have declined at about
five percent per year in South Texas for the last 20 years.
- NARRATOR:
are on the case.
- Habitat's looking pretty good here.
We've been doing a general scaled quail ecology study
on five different ranches...
- Looking much better.
- ...and the landowners have graciously allowed us
access to their properties, to put radio transmitters on birds
and allow our graduate students to follow them and collect
the data that they need.
[quail calling]
[music]
- NARRATOR:
South Texas sub-species.
♪ ♪
- ERIC: We don't have really any good idea of survival,
general nest success, all these general ecology type questions.
- BEN OLSEN: A lot of this is fairly new, what we're finding
with this research.
Here in South Texas, they're liking the thicker brush.
Watch that cactus.
At the rate it's being lost, it's going to be really
important in the future that we understand what happens when
we attempt to restore the habitat to the way it was
before the declines.
- NARRATOR:
of rangeland which once held scaled quail have been
transformed to monocultures.
- ERIC: Wow.
This is buffelgrass.
- NARRATOR:
but for quail, it's a problem.
- Quail can't walk through this.
- ERIC: This is a pretty extensive barrier, it appears.
- NARRATOR:
is temporarily turning this, into this.
With exotic grass removed, it will be re-seeded.
- We'll be planting a very diverse mix of native grasses
and forbs.
- NARRATOR:
to the restored habitat.
[quail calling]
- ERIC: Beautiful bird.
I think they're a symbol of unspoiled native habitat.
- NARRATOR:
once ranged across the Texas Hill Country and Trans-Pecos.
In the state today, it is limited to some
western mountains, and only the southwest edge
of the Edwards Plateau.
[Montezuma quail call]
- When we first bought property here
back in 2000, one of the things I noticed
was that we had Montezuma quail here.
[quail calls]
Kind of a relict population here in the Hill Country.
I started talking to some of my neighbors about the fact that we
had the birds and what we could do habitat-wise to possibly
improve things for the birds.
- NARRATOR:
improve wildlife habitat on their individual properties.
- Same scenario, where a big ranch broke up,
smaller places, people removing cedar, doing things
100, 200 acre parcel at a time, and people seeing
and hearing these birds.
- The first Montezuma we saw on the place went
right under this bush.
They just froze, and I didn't know what they were.
- DAVID: We've done some prescribed burning to try to
help the grass cover come back, and we've gone in a lot of the
thick cedar areas and cleared the junipers.
The birds very much select for that habitat on the left that's
been cleared and not for that closed-canopy cedar brake
you see on the right.
The birds, you know, preferring areas that you have
good grass cover.
We've had birds nesting right here around the house.
- ERIC: Really he's done a great job with this piece of
property here.
This will be point number one that we'll sample here.
- NARRATOR:
and Wildlife and A&M Kingsville will determine if habitat work
is increasing Montezuma numbers, but anecdotal evidence
looks promising.
[quail calls]
- DAVID: We really like to see them because of course knowing
you're dealing with a species that's been so reduced in range
and numbers, hopefully together we can kind of help them to
recover over some more of their historic habitat.
[Gambel's quail calls]
- NARRATOR:
- MIKE: There's a bunch over there too, there's a trap full.
- NARRATOR:
- ROBERT: The trapping's going very well.
- NARRATOR:
- MIKE: Three...
- ROBERT: Once the birds come in the trap, you don't want to
leave them there too long...
- MIKE: Seven.
Alright, 14.
Not a bad start.
- ROBERT: You're checking traps, you're taking birds out,
you're resetting the trap.
[seeds falling]
[music]
You've got to be actively driving up and down the road,
checking traps on the fly.
- There's one.
- NARRATOR:
about each quail, fitting them with identifying leg bands.
[music]
- BONNIE: I love these birds.
[music]
They're the most talkative.
- NARRATOR:
birds will be restored and originally proposed this
cooperative project.
- BONNIE: I'm the wildlife coordinator at the Adams Ranch,
which is actually called
El Carmen Land and Conservation Company.
We were really wanting to bring the Gambel quail back.
Historically they were found 10 miles up the road
at the Black Gap.
- NARRATOR:
have made El Carmen an ideal reintroduction site.
- BONNIE: Through the work that we've done landscape-wise,
opening up the floodplain, preventing the erosion,
putting in waters for wildlife, created some very good
Gambel's quail habitat.
88 birds.
- NARRATOR:
- BONNIE: That's a lot of birds!
- NARRATOR:
...it's time to hit the road.
[music]
- ROBERT: They're kept in the transport cages overnight,
and then the following morning they're released into the
new habitat at El Carmen.
[ATV started and moves out]
- NARRATOR:
an opening...
the birds eagerly return to their former range.
[birds flying away]
- Everybody flew strong.
That's great.
No injuries, no mortalities, so that's wonderful.
- NARRATOR:
After two seasons, the birds are raising chicks.
- Knowing that we're working on a project that's
helping bolster populations of the Gambel's quail,
it's exciting.
[radio telemetry beeps]
- NARRATOR:
quail in Texas, but there is also hope for a brighter future.
[quail calls]
- JON: We've seen the results.
In some of these areas where we're doing this work,
we're hearing them in areas where we haven't heard them.
[quail call]
- NARRATOR:
depends on the state of their native habitat.
And improving that will depend on people working together.
- Our birds have to have places to go.
We're losing habitat every day.
And by linking these properties up, I think we can make
a big difference.
- Unfortunately quail don't have any say-so in the matter,
and it's going to be up to us to take care of those
who can't take care of themselves.
[music]
- NARRATOR:
Restoration Funds.