Presenter: Vernon Bevill

Commission Agenda Item No. 11
Briefing
Texas Quail Plan
May 2004

I. Executive Summary: Texas is leading the nation in an effort to restore quail populations and habitat throughout their former range. The Texas Quail Plan is an ambitious initiative to assist and encourage private landowners to restore and enhance quail habitat throughout Texas.

II. Discussion: Bobwhite and other quails are important game birds throughout Texas, generating as much as $10 per acre or more for landowners leasing their property to hunters. Also, urban Texans and non-Texans as well are purchasing rural lands and developing them for the sole purpose of hunting quail. Throughout their traditional range in the southeastern U.S. bobwhite quail numbers have declined dramatically as a result of changing land uses and fragmentation. Texas is a last stronghold, but is being impacted by destructive factors as well. The Texas Quail Plan was developed by a broad range of interested citizens from state and federal agencies, private conservation organizations and private landowners to focus attention on the problems affecting quail, and to recommend solutions to restore quail populations to levels of the 1980s.