Here are a couple pheasant articles you two may be interested in.
Hey CWU, I got a gig over there next weekend, will be in town from around Thursday-Saturday. Will be doing a wall tent camp in the canyon I do believe.. Should have my YLNM with me, look me up and we can throw some bumpers for them..
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Wildlife 101: Pheasants' fate hinges on habitat
Bob Mottram
The Tacoma News Tribune
April 2, 2003


Remember the green-and-white bumper stickers you used to see on so many vehicles around Puget Sound? The ones that said, "Habitat is the Key?"
They weren't kidding.


When I was a kid on the East Coast, my dad and I joined a field trial club so we could run beagles competitively. The pint-sized hounds trailed rabbits, and two handlers, a couple of judges and a gallery of spectators would hot-foot it all over the landscape to see how well the hounds handled the scent. Those that did best at unscrambling the complicated trails that rabbits laid down won ribbons or trophies.


Our club leased several hundred acres for many years - a landscape of fields and stone fences - where we trained dogs and conducted the trials.


But a problem developed there, and many a monthly meeting of the club was taken up discussing it. The rabbits on our land were becoming fewer, even though nobody actually hunted them. It got harder and harder to scare up enough to conduct a proper field trial or to make a training trip worthwhile.


So the older, more experienced members of our club put their heads together and, after weeks of solemn discussion, came up with a plan to solve the problem. We would purchase cottontail rabbits from a breeder in North Carolina, ship cratefuls of them across several states to our own territory, and release them by the dozens on our land. That way our fields and fences would be brimful of bunnies, and we would revel in the abundance at our trials.


So we did that for a couple of years. We moved lots and lots of rabbits. And you know what?


At the end of that time we had no more rabbits - maybe fewer - than we had when we started.


Think about this. We were releasing rabbits to boost their population. Rabbits! Since when do rabbits need any help but each other's to produce more rabbits?


It wasn't until years later, in an introductory, university-level course in wildlife management, that I learned the folly of our effort. Fact is, populations of animals such as rabbits undergo tremendous annual turnover, and have tremendous capacity to expand. If they don't expand, it isn't because they aren't trying. It's because something in the environment has clamped a lid on them. This is Wildlife 101.


You have to give them what they need. You provide them natural food, places to hide, places to rear their offspring, and - Bam! - they fill that habitat with rabbits.


Or, in a slightly different context, they fill it with pheasants.


That was the subject of a recent weekend meeting in Moses Lake sponsored by Sen. Bob Oke, a Republican from Port Orchard, the Department of Fish and Wildlife and others. The focus was Washington's wild pheasants and their decline.


Several people at the meeting talked about planting birds on Eastern Washington's agricultural lands. It was deja vu. Like being back at the beagle club. It has been decades, more than I want to mention, since I learned how habitat affects wildlife, and how it works is no secret. Yet here were people - many my own age - who had spent a lifetime in the outdoors, and some of them were hearing this for the first time.


Experts brought in from major pheasant-producing states talked almost exclusively about habitat. When I was in school, characteristics of the habitat that prevented a wildlife population from expanding beyond a certain size were called "limiting factors." The experts at the Moses Lake meeting called them "bottlenecks." They mean the same thing.


A bottleneck needs to occur in only one vital function of habitat to limit population growth. It might be in providing nesting cover or food or refuge from predators or some other necessity. If nesting cover is the thing in shortest supply, for example, that is what determines population size even if the food supply is virtually unlimited.


When you figure out the cause of a bottleneck and eliminate it, population expands until it reaches the next bottleneck, which might be something different.


Back in the 1960s, Eastern Washington produced a lot of ringneck pheasants. Hunting drew thousands of people to the Columbia Basin every fall. Since then, the population has crashed. Simultaneously, Columbia Basin agriculture changed dramatically. Irrigation and cultivation became more intense, and a lot of pheasant habitat disappeared.


In 1997, the Department of Fish and Wildlife began to release pen-reared roosters on Eastern Washington agricultural lands each fall. The money to do this - and the requirement to do it - resulted from a bill sponsored by Sen. Oke that the Legislature passed into law. It levies a $10 annual surcharge on Eastern Washington pheasant hunters and earmarks 80 percent of the money for bird releases. Twenty percent goes for habitat. The 80-20 split surprised the department.


"We didn't even get to comment on it," said Dave Ware, the agency's game management chief.


It happened in conference committee when representatives of the Senate and the House gathered to negotiate a compromise between Senate and House versions of the bill.


"We didn't want the split in there," Ware said. "We wanted the ability to determine what it ought to be."


The department wanted, he said, to be able to exploit some of the numerous federal matching-fund programs aimed at improving habitat.


The split wasn't the only change that occurred in committee. Another directed the agency to provide landowners with hen pheasants produced as a result of the rearing program, even though hunters may not shoot hens. Presumably the hens were to be released to reproduce and boost the permanent population.


By way of contrast, South Dakota - probably the world's foremost pheasant producer - spends 80 percent of its pheasant-restoration-stamp revenue on habitat.


Don't confuse the Eastern Washington program with the long-running stocking program in Western Washington, by the way. Lands west of the Cascades are not capable of providing good habitat for pheasants, and birds are released on this side of the hill strictly to hunt. They're not expected to reproduce.


Sen. Oke says he wants 20,000 birds a year released in Eastern Washington "until the population comes up. Then maybe the money can be better spent."


The problem, of course, is that until the money is better spent, the population will not come up. Because some bottleneck is holding it down.


Oke says he thinks the state should continue to release birds at least for Washington's special youth hunts, so youngsters will have something to pursue. The experts in Moses Lake agree that pheasant releases can have that kind of short-term effect.


What have they learned about long-term management? Tony Leif, leader of South Dakota's statewide upland game management and research program, says South Dakota has learned this:


• Manipulating hunting seasons has little effect if hunting is cocks-only, because the birds are polygynous.


• Pheasant releases are ineffective.


• Local predator control can be helpful if the habitat is there first.


• Habitat programs are the key to success.


"These critters are highly prolific," Leif told the people at the meeting. "You give them the habitat and the weather, and they'll crank out the birds."

Bob Mottram: 253-597-8640
bob.mottram@mail.tribnet.com
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Loss of habitat fuels pheasant decline
BOB MOTTRAM
The Tacoma News Tribune
April 2, 2003


MOSES LAKE - Pheasant hunting in South Dakota is as good as it gets, and it's as good as it is because South Dakota contains the three essential elements for pheasants, that state's Department of Game, Fish and Parks says.
Those three elements?


Habitat, habitat and habitat.


Pheasants need habitat for reproduction, habitat for avoiding predators and habitat for winter survival. And they are not necessarily the same.


"What's going to influence how many pheasants we have in South Dakota and how many pheasants you're going to have in Washington is how much pheasant habitat you have on the ground," said Tony Leif, senior wildlife biologist for the South Dakota agency.


Leif was in Moses Lake along with representatives of the Iowa and Kansas wildlife management agencies, the Wildlife Management Institute of Washington, D.C., and others for a public workshop aimed at finding ways to turn around Washington's dramatic decline in wild pheasant populations.


Sen. Bob Oke (R-Port Orchard), himself a pheasant hunter, and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife co-sponsored the two-day gathering with Pheasants Forever, a private conservation organization; and the Big Bend Economic Development Council.


Washington's harvest of wild ringneck pheasants, a bird that originated in Asia, reached its peak in the middle to late 1960s, with another, slightly lower, peak in the late 1970s. However, harvest - which is an indicator of population size - has declined from a high of about 650,000 in the 1960s to little more than 100,000 in 2001.


In many years, South Dakota harvests more than a million birds.


Biologists aren't sure what caused the decline in Washington, but research in many parts of the United States indicates that loss of habitat is the primary reason. And many Washington areas that had high-quality habitat in the 1960s no longer do.


Sen. Oke was prime sponsor of legislation that took effect in 1997 and levied a $10 annual surcharge on Eastern Washington pheasant hunters. That typically provides the department $350,000 to $400,000 per year, and the law requires the agency to use 80 percent of it to buy and release pen-reared pheasants on that side of the state.


The law surprised the Department of Fish and Wildlife, however, when it specified the 80 percent rule. The agency had hoped for more flexibility so that it might use a greater portion of the money as matching funds for federal farm bill grants that would develop habitat.


The visiting experts in Moses Lake confirmed that pen-reared-bird releases have limited benefit.


"If you have pheasants on the landscape, they're going to produce what the habitat will support," Leif said. "The only logical time to plant is if you have zero and you need to establish a population."


Releasing birds where pheasants already exist may boost hunting success, Leif said, but it will not increase populations long term. South Dakota tried several stocking techniques over the years, such as hen releases in the spring, chick releases in the summer, and cock releases in the fall. Survival of released birds was low in all cases, and none of the techniques boosted permanent populations.


The only technique that had any type of noticeable effect was release of roosters in the fall, and that effect was limited.


A fall release "is effective for shooting preserves," Leif said, "because the birds can survive for the couple of hours between when they are put out and when the hunters arrive. But it doesn't enhance populations, and it is not an option for Game, Fish and Parks, because it's too expensive."


Randy Rodgers, a biologist with the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks, said no matter what the state, agriculture is what drives pheasants.


"A lot of things farmers do with no thought to wildlife," he said, "have a tremendous effect on pheasants."


Rodgers said pheasant populations in his state are tied primarily to wheat. Bird numbers trend up or down depending on both the timing of agricultural activities and the way they are carried out. Cutting wheat stubble short rather than leaving it longer, for example, results in fewer birds because it deprives the birds of cover. On the other hand, weather produces only short-term fluctuations.


Grasses and forbs - particularly broad-leafed forbs - are essential to pheasants because they produce the insects that pheasant chicks require in their diets. They also provide nesting cover for hens. Alfalfa is a particularly productive nesting habitat, but can be a trap. Most farmers mow it before hens finish nesting.


"That may be your silver bullet," Leif said. "To produce your pheasants in alfalfa, if you can figure out how to get them in there and out of there before they get whacked by the mower."


In Kansas, the wildlife agency promotes the planting of grass buffers along the edges of other crops.


"I believe there are ways to get good wildlife habitat into good farming practices," Rodgers said. "They are not mutually exclusive."


Terry Riley, director of conservation for the Wildlife Management Institute, said Washington must identify the "bottlenecks" that hold pheasant population down. They might be, for example, winter survival, fall survival, brood survival or nesting success. Managers need to figure out how to fix them, then work on the most critical things first.


"You've got to focus on areas where you think you can get something done," he said. "Don't spend anything elsewhere, because you don't have enough money to do all of it."


Managers need "big landscapes" to foster pheasant numbers, Riley said, and Washington should establish several of these.


"You can't manage pheasants on 50 acres or even 5,000 acres," he said. "It may take a 1 million-acre landscape. And you can't do it everywhere. You can't scatter your money. You've got to focus on the areas where you have the best opportunity to turn the population around in a reasonable time."


The federal farm bill is an excellent vehicle for putting habitat on the ground. It provides hundreds of millions of dollars a year for farmland conservation programs, many of which benefit birds. In South Dakota, the wildlife agency delegates a person to solicit as much farm bill money as possible and to use it to establish pheasant habitat. Then the agency uses its own money to enhance that habitat.


Apparently it's money well spent, because in South Dakota the economic impact of pheasants is huge. Nonresident hunters spend about $100 million in South Dakota's cities and towns every year, and about $7.5 million of that finds its way to the Game, Fish and Parks Department in the form of nonresident license fees. That accounts for about one-fourth of the department's annual operating budget.


Lack of funding hurts WDFW


The Department of Fish and Wildlife says it will have to curtail much of its work with landowners in Eastern Washington aimed at improving fish and wildlife habitat, because it has lost federal funding.


It said this year's federal budget does not include money that usually provides about 60 percent of the funding for the agency's Upland Wildlife Restoration Program in eastside counties. The funding loss means a reduction of nearly $1 million for the program.


The program's employees work with farmers and other landowners to improve habitat by planting cover, modifying agricultural practices and installing water developments.


Mark Quinn, the department's lands division manager, said the work also enhances the agency's ability to negotiate hunting access on many of these private lands.


Over the past 10 years, the program has worked with nearly 1,300 private landowners to enhance hundreds of thousands of acres of wildlife habitat.


Bob Mottram: 253-597-8640
bob.mottram@mail.tribnet.com