Quail Forever is proud to announce a new partnership with the National Park Service (NPS) at Kings Mountain National Military Park in South Carolina. The partnership will help fund oak/pine savanna restoration and quail habitat restoration at the park, in addition to bolstering prescribed fire efforts. The military park will become part of a large-scale quail focal area that includes lands managed by South Carolina Parks, Recreation, and Tourism. All told, both parks cover just over 10,000 acres and share a mutual goal to restore habitat to Revolutionary War conditions.
Kings Mountain National Military Park is the site of a Revolutionary War battle that took place on October 7, 1780 between patriot and loyalist militias. The engagement was a significant patriot victory and one of the largest American vs American battles of the war.
“The goal of the park is to restore the Revolutionary era landscape,” said Kayla Silva, a Quail Forever coordinating biologist whose primary work is at the park. “The ecosystem was historically a wide open oak savannah, which also makes for great quail habitat. So by recreating what the park looked like during the battle, we’re also helping restore the historic quail population that was present at the time.”
The park encompasses nearly 4,000 acres and sees over 200,000 visitors each year. As part of the new partnership, Quail Forever will assist with outreach events, herbicide application, bobwhite whistle counts and prescribed fire efforts.
“Prescribed fire is particularly important,” Silva said. “It’s the key to opening up that canopy and letting more sunlight in, which is one of the best ways to restore those historic native grasses that were present here.”
The new partnership at Kings Mountain is part of a longstanding collaboration between Quail Forever and the National Park Service to help reestablish quail populations across their historic range in the Southeast.
“Since we began our partnership with the National Park Service in March of 2018, we’ve been able to join forces on multiple projects and public land opportunities,” said Tim Caughran, Quail Forever’s director of conservation delivery. “The new venture at Kings Mountain is really exciting, and our ability to work together with NPS, South Carolina DNR, and the Natural Resource Conservation Service Working Lands for Wildlife-Bobwhite Program will allow us as conservation partners to achieve landscape scale results.”
About Quail Forever
Pheasants Forever and
Quail Forever make up the nation's largest nonprofit organization dedicated to upland habitat conservation. This community of more than 400,000 members, supporters and partners is dedicated to the protection of our uplands through habitat improvement, public access, education and advocacy. A network of 754 local chapters spread across North America determine how 100 percent of their locally raised funds are spent — the only national conservation organization that operates through this grassroots structure. Since its creation in 1982, the organization has dedicated more than $1 billion to 567,500 habitat projects benefiting 22 million acres.
Media contact
Casey Sill
(402)-657-4143
csill@pheasantsforever.org