New Jersey reframes their goals on northern bobwhite restoration
By Rachel Holt
Northern Bobwhites once whistled through New Jersey’s fields and pine forests. Today, the bird is functionally extinct in the state––one of many to feel the full effects of the bobwhite’s drastic decline.
This sobering reality has prompted a shift in the state’s conservation strategies. Instead of focusing solely on reviving quail populations, groups like Quail Forever and New Jersey Audubon are reframing the conversation toward early successional habitat –– which can benefit not only birds, but a wide array of wildlife and pollinators.
Early successional habitat refers to the mix of grasses, wildflowers, shrubs and young trees that grow after a disturbance like fire or logging. This habitat provides bare ground, dense cover and diverse plant structure that bobwhites and many other grassland species need to nest, forage and raise their young.
The decline of bobwhites in New Jersey mirrors a wider story of habitat loss, fragmentation and shifting land-use priorities. Due to urbanization, modern farming and decreased forest management, early successional habitat has become nearly nonexistent in the state.
Efforts to restore bobwhite to New Jersey have been an uphill battle. In 2015, a three-year project spearheaded by New Jersey Audubon was launched in hopes of reversing the birds’ decline through the translocation of quail from Georgia to a property in Southern New Jersey. But despite the promising release site habitat conditions, the efforts ultimately revealed more challenges than solutions.
Moving quail to a different climate and latitude shifted the quail’s nesting and breeding periods, according to Ryan Hasko, the Stewardship Project Director of Forestry for New Jersey Audubon. This resulted in fewer clutches of eggs than normal and an overall negative impact on their survival.
Though the project fell short of expectations, the habitat work surrounding the translocation project yielded a boom in early successional species, from songbirds to butterflies. This catalyzed a shift in strategy, making New Jersey conservationists reframe their goals.
“Quail is a poster child for us,” said Celia Vuocolo, the New Jersey Audubon Stewardship Project director for agriculture and wetlands. “We're interested in the species, but the project has evolved to looking more at how we can get large-scale early successional habitat across the landscape, particularly in Southern New Jersey, and there's been a lot of interest and efforts around that.”
The task of implementing early successional habitat in New Jersey is no easy feat, according to Hunter Ross, a Quail Forever New Jersey Farm Bill biologist.
With forest stands growing denser from decades of fire suppression and lack of forest management, the state’s landscape has lost the kind of structural diversity that bobwhite–– and countless other species––depend on.
“We need to reframe what a healthy forest is because many of the stands we’re working in have become crowded over time,” Ross said. “Just because they're full of trees doesn't necessarily mean they're healthy. The understory is often dense and lacks heterogeneity in its structure and composition, there are commonly invasives and fire suppression promotes trees that aren’t always best suited for the area.”
Fire suppression and the loss of natural processes that once created and maintained early successional habitat have disrupted the mosaic of habitat types across the landscape. Hasko said that for a while, timber harvesting and other forms of active management were able to mimic those effects to some extent. But over time, the approach has declined, leading to increasing fragmentation.
Unlike other parts of the country, Vuocolo said much of New Jersey lacks a strong cultural understanding of fire, leading to its statewide suppression.
“New Jersey is an urban state,” she said. “That cultural understanding of what fire can be in terms of being a useful management tool is not as prevalent. There's a lot of education that needs to happen for the larger public in our state to feel comfortable with prescribed fire and understand not just the habitat benefits, but the wildfire mitigation benefits as well.”
Despite these barriers, Hasko, Vuocolo and Ross all emphasized the importance of cost-share programs, collaboration and landowner education. Harnessing Farm Bill programs can provide financial support that helps offset the cost of habitat restoration and management, making projects more feasible for landowners.
Conservation groups like New Jersey Audubon are also working to lead by example. Vuocolo said New Jersey Audubon actively and regularly manages their sanctuaries in southern New Jersey with prescribed fire and forest stand improvement and hopes it will serve as an example for landowners in terms of promoting early successional habitat.
As a result, the work on the ground is helping pave the way for a broader cultural shift––one that reconnects people with the species and habitats they’ve lost. Though the bobwhite’s signature whistle has been absent from the New Jersey landscape for years, many still fondly recall their presence, making them a compelling symbol for restoration.
“Quail is often the foot in the door,” Ross said. “There's a nostalgic sort of reminiscence that a lot of producers and landowners talk about. Having quail as the forefront for successional habitat, grassland and pine savannah restoration can open the conversation to talking about other species like the grasshopper sparrow, red-headed woodpecker, timber rattlesnake and a whole suite of others that benefit from the same kind of quality habitat work that you're doing for quail.”