The State of Virginia is moving to reclaim a leadership role in restoring wild northern bobwhites, reports the Wildlife Management Institute. The Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (VDGIF) is launching a new and improved statewide bobwhite initiative. Following a January 2008 resolution by the VDGIF Board making quail restoration a high agency priority, a comprehensive Virginia Quail Action Plan (QAP) was developed over the following year by agency staff and partners. The plan represents the second major quail-recovery commitment.

In 1996, the VDGIF unveiled what arguably was the first modern statewide quail initiative?a five-year plan to stem long-term bobwhite population declines. That groundbreaking investment involved the creation of an agency Virginia Quail Team, focus of money and personnel efforts in target counties and provision for intensive landowner assistance. Further, that initiative was the first in the Southeast to promote new technologies for converting tame pastures to native, warm-season grasses. Although that five-year plan was not renewed, it served as a major catalyst for development of the regional Northern Bobwhite Conservation Initiative (NBCI) by the Southeastern Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies in 2002.

The new plan was finalized early in 2009. Concurrently, a multi-agency Virginia Quail Council, comprised of more than 20 partner agencies and organizations supportive of the QAP, has been convened. At least 18 of these partners have signed a Memorandum of Agreement pledging to partner with VDGIF to facilitate implementation of the QAP. The VDGIF Board approved the QAP in February and, in June, approved full funding to begin implementation in July. From a five-year budget of $9 million, much of the first-year budget of $1.5 million will be provided by the VDGIF. However, full funding and ultimate success will require the partners to step up.

Initial restoration efforts will be concentrated in six target counties?Augusta, Culpeper, Halifax, King and Queen, Sussex and Wythe. Five private-lands biologists, shared with the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, will be hired, who will work with private landowners to encourage best management practices. Other major funding for quail habitat work is expected to be available through Farm Bill conservation programs.

A unique twist of the QAP is its community and small landowner-centric concept of the "quail quilt." Marc Puckett, VDGIF's Small Game Project Leader, credits this folksy variation on the landowner cooperative or focal area concepts to lessons learned from the state's first quail plan. According to Puckett, "We've been trying to bring quail back one farm at a time for 20 years and it has not worked. The agency cannot do it alone; the idea with quail quilts is to put some of the onus for quail recovery on Virginia's landowners. We will be seeking locally led groups to step up and work with their communities, to come together to ?sew' numerous smaller pieces of land and restored habitats into larger blocks, which become useful habitat quilts that begin changing entire landscapes."?

The Plan can be viewed in its entirety, along with any and all other things related to Virginia quail, on the QAP website. (dfm)