Change
As we have heard in all of the politicians in one party, "Change is good". Unfortunately, if you're a quail, the wrong change is really really bad. It isn't all that hard if you understand quail ecology to understand why their numbers have plummeted. Add together the loss of grassland acres in the '80's during the "feed the world" mentality. Mix in our lazy attitude to cedar, hedge, elm, and other invasive species of trees invading our grasslands, waterways, and even out woodlands. Pour in our psychotic aversion to "weeds" and the chemical responses to them. Dump in a plethora of INSECTICIDES, and make the fur hating activists a stage to throw red paint from.......and the poor, narrowly adapted quail finds himself living in "pockets" instead of owning the SE 40% of these United States. Sometimes it is the little things like stocking 1200 pound cows at the same rate you stocked 1000 pound cows 30 years ago. Sometimes it's big things like center pivots changing the western Kansas landscape from fields of dryland milo to circles of corn and soybeans. It all adds up, it's all our collective fault. Yes, some of it was necessary for our own survival. Some is due to our poor understanding of how our actions affect our own environment. As hunters, we need to know, understand, and communicate these problems when we have an audience so that we don't drift into the abyss of what once was. Yeah, it's theatrical, but it is more serious than even that. It will take significant $ to change the direction. It will take other reasons to make it happen. Reasons like reducing fire danger caused by cedar invasion into prairie where numerous homes now reside. Reasons like declining groundwater levels and quality. We won't do it just for quail. There will have to be bigger reasons to get it done on a landscape scale, but it all starts with each of us.