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Rural System? Just Dreaming …
A For-Profit Conglomerate for
Meaningful Jobs
Healthful Communities
and Improved Natural Resource Management
by Robert H. Giles, Jr., Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia
2007
Chapter 26. Fox Tracks and Covey Flushes
Dreaming: Night winds push and pull spruce brooms. Night winds crash angry waves against the shore, knowing they will win the game of destruction. Night waters, free of heat, burst their containers, push soil up around rocks … collections of columns… Night walls pop as some last movement of the still building's cold allows one more nail to escape one more step … very fast by someone's scale of speed. Moth and rust doth… always changing, all are beset by unrelenting, tireless, savage, destructive forces. Springtime long morning sunbeams can be remembered. Just dreaming …
| Stories about The Coyote Group, a canid-oriented enterprise and The Quail Group with their obvious and not-so-obvious relations. |
| …Another serious defect in game management is our failure to interest the average farmer. To really interest the farmer, we must show him a financial return from his conservation activities. …The practical benefit desired by the average farmer is a cash return, and we must find some way to give it to him. |
| US Senator (Virginia) A. Willis Robertson, 1932 |
There were eight people in the pickup truck. The bench chests along each side of the truck bed made small grinding noises beneath the seat pads as the truck stirred up dust. It was late, dark, and only the two in front felt the cool night air blowing against them. It took 20 minutes to reach the first stop. Though dark, it could be seen as an open fallow field in the half-moon light. All four on one side stood up, while the guide pulled out some equipment. He turned on a recording of fox yelps. All sat quietly. They had been told a little of what might occur but most were skeptical and were going along for a different experience, a night out in the country air, and in two cases just to have another unusual date.
The sounds were played several times and all waited silently. The guide knew where the foxes lived but there was not assurance that they would respond. Predicting wild animal group behavior is for those who just do not understand. Within a few minutes there was a yelp. The guide sounded again and to the surprise, delight and …yes some fear that they might jump into the bed of the truck … three foxes ran around the truck several times seemingly in search of the foreign invader that was sounding off. Of course the group was excited and thrilled. The first stop had yielded the desired experience. They had seen wild foxes in the wild. Two other stops were made. Before each one the guide explained their current studies, the work being done, the life history of the red fox, and more about Rural System and its Coyote Group. They learned about that enterprise devoted to activities associated with the wild dogs of the world. Its members, like bird watchers, were developing a life list of the wild "canids" they has seen. It merely used the name "Coyote" as a survivor, an invader into the eastern US, and an important animal in natural western land systems, and a mammal that is now becoming a new member, perhaps a resource in the East.
On Rural System Tract 25 in North Carolina, foxes were under intensive management. There were no similar areas elsewhere. Foxes were just seen as part of nature, harvested or not, depending more on the wishes of fox populations than trapper populations. They seemed to change in numbers conspicuously each year, but there were no serious surveys and index efforts were poorly analyzed or reported. It was a hand-off resource of the wildlife agency, founded on hope, given response when problems arose (like suspected transmission of rabies), and blamed for every decline in every other game animal. It was a resource given by nature, and not a penny's worth of significant extra animal or population or benefit could be asserted by the agency for their having invested time or money. Rarely in wild faunal agencies will "extra" animals or benefits be asserted .to be a result of management. The claims of progress and need for money to sustain the agency are usually expressed in terms of hunters, lectures, movies shown, and acres seeded. Worse, the claims are made in terms of animals present or harvested, literally the contributions of natural forces. Within Rural System the pressures are on for describing the increased resource, the significant amount of "change" due to management investments, not just the observed or estimated total resource. It marks a radical shift, one difficult but sure to pay off for the resource and eventually for the managers committed to its sustained benefits for people over a very long period.
Here on Tract 25 was a difference. Money was to be made from year-around bus and truck tours for people to learn about and see foxes. The highest amount possible was clear…from all fox-related benefits - the goods, services, products, memories, etc., already listed. The price of the ticket was high; the costs were low. For that enterprise to be successful, no matter what the budget said, there had to be abundant foxes. As always in ecological work, finding the proper maximum abundance, then a properly bounded abundance, remained under study. A sustained abundance year after year around a stated desired abundance was the requirement for the staff. There had to be foxes for every group of people to experience. The observability must be sustained, not necessarily the population. For there to be profits, the word-of-mouth advertising must be positive, abundant, and widespread. "We saw nothing!" would soon mean death for the enterprise.
The enterprise was not so narrow minded or unaware of other interests that it did not exploit opportunities for photographers to get new images from their blinds, groups of hunters to tour to learn about the ecology of foxes, for school children to visit in bus loads and walk paths to tracking spots, old dens, trapper demonstrations, and lectures on the behavior and ecology of the fox, its parasites and diseases, and its food requirements. Special memberships were offered into Coyote and Nature Folks. The relations of the red and gray foxes to coyotes were discussed at several places. Sales were made of books, photographs, pamphlets, research reports, track casts, and note cards. Fox-pup photographs were a best seller. In some years abandoned kit foxes were hand raised and visitors were encouraged to visit and photograph them. Commissions were gained from sales of equipment like that used on the night trips. Commissions were similarly made from affiliations with local restaurants and bed-and-breakfast places that housed the visitors for the late night trips. When the weather was good, these late night trips were concluded at a campfire with catered refreshments and local "country" and folk music.
To have stable populations of abundant foxes in a specific area (Rural System Tract 25 is an ownership of 150 acres) there must be present more knowledge of mammalian ecology than is easily found. The manager thought that he might have two species of fox co-existing on the same area. That remained a question as he assumed one or the other would disappear under the competition that would occur when the coyote invaded the Tract. The gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) is very effective in rodent control. Quail, prey of foxes, may be balanced in a tradeoff with the work that the fox does on cotton rats that prey on quail eggs. Red (Vulpes fulva) and gray foxes are similar and often difficult to determine in quick sightings in the wild. The gray fox has a black-tipped tail; the red has a white-tipped tail. Their colors vary widely but the red fox typically is uniformly light rufus, reddish, or "orange" in color. The fur of the gray fox is much less valuable than that of the red fox. Trapping activity is very much a function of fur market prices and so "pelt sales" as an index to population abundance say little.
Gray and red foxes inhabit slightly different types of areas on Tract 25. Red fox areas were seen as those where there is great variety of types of vegetation (forests, grasslands, cropland, rocky areas, etc.). The rolling pastures interspersed with sparse woodlands and wet areas seemed perfect. The gray fox uses the same type areas but is most likely abundant where a mixture occurs of age classes of timber. Both species use dens, often made by groundhogs (Marmota monax), also called woodchucks. They will also dig or enlarge holes for themselves and the entrance is often under hollow logs or debris piles. Since the gray fox tends to eat more rabbits and more fruit than the red, the manager favored natural fruiting shrubs and planted others along the contour.
Three years ago the managers thought that the objective for the area was increasing the number of people seeing foxes and learning a little about them. Under pressure, the question was clear: If an increase is desired, then how much? What is the demand? Then the objective changed to what are we selling and how much does it cost, and that finally it emerged as the desire to maximize the profits over 150 years within plus or minus 5% of those in 2005. It had been a long and heated trip from "lots of people" to "reasonable profits." Without a clear statement, there is no limit to the amount of money, time, energy, and risk that can be expended on the gray fox resource. The manager's dilemmas: opposing objectives of increasing game and furbearers and their associated benefits for people and also reducing predation and disease. With other enterprise leaders on trips to workshops, the manager discussed the differences in caged foxes and wild foxes … caged vs. wild anything, for they realized that eliminating competition, predation, accidents, poaching, and even disease was easier and less costly per animal with an "in-cage" strategy than one "in-the-wild." Whether the newly-evolving American urbanite would recognize the difference or care, or pay to see the difference was a prediction that was also discussed.
The manager now needed a viable gray fox population for Tract 25 and knew he must provide the habitat preferences of the species. That required adequate supplies of diverse foods in every month, year after year. As for profits, he had to stabilize a food supply within reasonable bounds. Excessive amounts would show mismanagement of funds for seed and fertilizer; inadequate amounts would reduce reproduction and may cause kit mortality.
Available food influences both the diet and which habitats they use each season. The gray fox is adaptable but needs well-distributed shrub cover, and, in particular, dense tangled cover. They roam widely and hunt in brushy meadows as well as in mature oak-hickory forests. The manager knew he could get four families on the tract if he was lucky and the adjoining tracts remained in approximately the same management. A desirable management area was one exceeding 500 acres since foxes have an average home range of a little over 3 square miles.
Young-age plant communities were achieved by timber harvests and by paying strict attention to the regular harvest schedule. These young areas had insects and mice essential for the fox family. Both species of foxes are omnivorous and their diets vary by season, not by choice but by what is naturally present. Acorns, corn, grasses, berries, and succulent fruits were the food of summer. The winter diet is meat...small mammals and birds. The reptiles and amphibians were all hidden in their frozen winter "hibernation" areas.
Denning sites are special. The manager develops an eye for good sites by observing existing sites over many years. While they may be characterized, there is a synthesis done for the young fox in the genetics of the species that allows it to recognize the "good den site." Human observers may gain such awareness by observation. Foxes just know. The best den sites, with practice, can be recognized as having been groundhog holes under roots of wind-thrown oaks and hickories, hollow logs (for dens as well as insect foods), cavities under rock ledges, and sometimes hollow tree cavities. Woodpiles and abandoned buildings are occasionally used. Dens are in forests and brush near cliffs and bluffs but also near a dense thicket of blackberry about one-half acre in size. Entrances are typically well screened with surrounding vegetation within a 20-yard distance on all sides. Last year, the manager had planted a patch of dense shrubs near three sites to achieve this condition. Foxes often use the same den year after year. The manager fertilized fruiting vines, shrubs, and trees and opened the forest canopies to sunlight. These thicket areas are important in fox pup survival. They provide a hiding place and food. They need special attention when prescribed burning is used.
Gray fox diet is known to include fish, unlike the red fox. The winter foods are rabbits, ground squirrels, groundhogs, mice and other rodents, birds, fish, crabs, and insects. They are omnivores and opportunists so reported regional diets do not match well with diets of animals recorded for one site. For mice, the manager, with staff of The Owls Group (Chapter 2, story 9) work on getting rich dense meadows for mice near the Tract. A brushy edge of a multi-layered forest, especially one with nut-producing trees is ideal. These "hard mast" producers for fox food included oaks, walnuts, hickories, and chestnuts near water. Protecting all streams and sources of ground water within the management area tended to be an activity useful for gray fox populations. The manager was always involved in avoiding ground fires; firewood removal; polluted water sources; grazing; free-ranging dog disturbances; and high raccoon populations. Gray foxes are highly susceptible to canine distemper, with 50 percent mortality rates or higher having been recorded. The raccoon population within the Tract was reduced to avoid large numbers that often foretold this epizootic. The managers knew well that gray foxes couldn't be stockpiled since they rarely reach their life span potential of 10-12 years. Stocking them was out of the question.
People of day- as well as night-trips to the area were taken by at least one scent-post site. These were described to them as one way that the fox population is being monitored. A mixture of sand and clay in an area of about 60 square feet surrounds a two-foot stake in the center. A small amount of an awful smelling solution (a whiff is jokingly shared) is poured on the post. Foxes and other animals visit the scent and leave their tracks. The tracks are counted and the area is smoothed at each visit. With sightings and other indices, the tracks provide one way to monitor the population and its trends.
Just as managers of the bobwhite quail actively produce food for them, so do the managers of foxes. Feed quail; feed foxes. For the near future, the coyotes will find abundant food and may progressively out-compete or suppress the foxes. Their predation on fawns is likely to be the major way that inadequately-hunted, now-out-of control deer populations are suppressed. Feeding wild foxes is difficult.
On Tract 25 there was a pattern that could be seen from an airplane that was quite different from surrounding areas. There were triangles and hexagons of brush strips about 10 feet wide and in between there were fields of different colors, some in the bright green of clover, some in the tans of grain, others in the mixtures of last year's "weeds." The fields were small, some a half acre up to 5 acres. The emphases were on corners, edges, and rich, close-together different types of vegetation, all being planted, seeded, mowed, or disked to achieve an abundant, diverse food supply throughout every year. The corners were usually marked by a center fruit tree or shrub. Vegetative strips like spokes from a wheel hub surrounded it. Between the borders in the "open areas" were different crops, rotated in grains, clovers, and some left fallow for 1 to 3 years depending on local moisture relations. The work was to produce meadow voles in the open areas, rabbits in the borders and fields, groundhogs and songbirds in the borders and corners, and quail nesting sites in the fallow field … but all adjacent to mowed areas for the bumble-bee-like chicks. If foxes were hogs, these would be called troughs.
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Over much of the nation quail populations have appeared to decline. Sportsmen reports vary; regional songbird observation routed cast potentially biased densities; peak populations appear in some areas (like Tract 25 now does) yet no birds are found in other areas. Regional complaints about the quail status increase in official offices as hunters, 12% of the population, decrease, and a larger percentage of the population moves to the cities (70%). There are growing numbers of the population (12% x 30% =3.6%) that do not know the bird, its call, or anything about it. There is widespread acceptance that quail rarely occur on large, intensively cultivated cropland areas. "Clean farming" includes large fields, few fences, large cultivation equipment, many visits to the fields, and using low-till herbicides that reduce seed- and weed-foraging insects. The Covey Group faces these dynamic conditions in the region, changes as profound as the disappearance of horse or rail travel. It acknowledges changes in the birds themselves, and is convinced that it cannot halt or significantly change crop cultivation practices. It believes that cropping practices will change over the next 50 years, especially in relation to slightly warming conditions (crops suitable in extended growing seasons).
It starts with a quail-as-resource philosophy and encourages cooperative development within Rural System. The concept is as elsewhere, concrete and specific areas supporting the sophisticated management of a quail population for the 150-year period. The premises:
Enclaves
The Covey Group developed a specialized land use pattern that they called "enclaves." They have been mentioned above but appear as sets of four adjacent small triangular fields of Perennials Grains, Legumes, and Fallow (pglfs). Various grains may be cultivated or fields managed in nitrogen-fixing plants (e.g., Setaria) or an alternative trial or vegetation management tactic used. The enclaves were usually hexagons (six equilateral triangles)
| Area (A) of an equilateral Triangle:
Where s = a side, then about A 0.5 / 2 But more precisely, let S = 3 s / 2 and Area = (S ((S - s) 3)) 0.5 |
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Clearing or field enclaves, with letters symbolizing significantly different foods or important cover |
Studies
The manager's office had a small museum shelf. Outdoor people are collectors of special things. "Unique" is common. As for other professionals, building a library was critical and single-species collections were rare. Managers worked in their private "quiet place" like that of a medical doctor studying a rare (and thus unfounded-for-study) disease. While much is known about the foxes, there are key pieces of information needed. He spoke of his knowledge base, and his knowledge searching system, his phrase for research but he included surveys, inventories, and collections of observations made by experts and by almost any reasonable person in the field. His was heuristics. "No truth, only versions" under which was semper reformanda (always reforming) was in a frame on the office wall. The vast number of person-hours spent by instructors, trainees, and other observers in the area were producing invaluable observations that are never called "research" but add to knowledge about the fox. Sampling was out of the question for he was always short of time, money, and adequate sample sizes that he could compute but never achieve. His systems were so variable he knew before going to the field the conclusion of every study which was that "no conclusions could be drawn because of the high variability found and more research is needed." He kept good records and they were slowly beginning to "add up," now more in knowledge than volume. He had two distant collaborators that took backups of his data and writings, for country fires are common and staff changes are expected. He was as committed to conserving his knowledge base as he was toward "conserving" foxes.
He was mindful of Rural System's policy of not doing research only using it. It was a good sentiment, like "don't litter," and easily ignored. He had been surrounded for more than half of his life with teachers, most of whom had done research or were doing it. "Science" had been translated into "do research" rather than a splendid way to know things. The policy was rarely mentioned now, four years after Rural System's kick off celebration. A foundation had been formed and research was done with some funds complementing those in administration. As he had experienced in his graduate program, there were research teams, with each person having his own project but all being unified by a common topic. All shared ideas, helped each other, gave critiques, solved computer blockages, announced current reference discoveries, shared journals, and assured project continuance in the event of major sickness or death. Now he could do little of that specialized teamwork, but he had learned from it and now that the foundation staff was available, he saw where some aids were possible. Their open conference-meetings were usually attended and new statistical questions were only a query away.
Studies within the foundation were done on Rural System Tracts as truth seeking, as a means to produce findings or conclusions that should be moved into decisions as rapidly as possible. They lacked most of the criteria for being called basic research. They were to build a knowledge base that can produce inputs to decisions. Although differences in basic and applied research are debated, the foundation had its own policy of ignoring the debate. The need is for high quality information for improving difficult decisions, for finding various optima.
Within the foundation they encouraged using Rural System Tracts for planned already-funded studies by staff and serious students when such activities did not likely threaten the mission or security of the area. Rural System, of course had benefited greatly from harvesting results of past studies. Findings enhance the effectiveness of land management and manager's ability to meet public and land owner wishes. Gaining facts or high-belief statements has to carry the baggage of what studies to conduct, what facts to use, and what conflicting theory or paradigm to select. Rural System managers continue to test a pseudo-policy that
Once conclusions are drawn, then arise the questions of ownership of results, what is the public resource, and who should share when there and multiple sources and mixing of funds and resources (even use of the private land of the Rural System Tract itself. These are clear in federal agencies, less clear in tax-assisted not-for-profit organizations offering research funds. Scrambled within these issues emerges questions of evaluating the research work for the criterion for basic studies is not for use but contribution to knowledge, generally with use left for later determination. Others prefer evaluating research based on publications, prominence of publication, use, people affected, and financial gains estimated. Payoff is the criterion.
In Rural System's studies, the selection criteria are based in modeling and sensitivity analyses of each system. These analyses, based on computer procedures, isolate the factor that most governs the real solution. It is the factor to which the system is most sensitive. Similarly, simple proportional analyses are done, finding the factor in which a change will make the greatest change in the system's performance. Discussions often lead to analogies that suggest "cornerstones" or holes in an otherwise complete panel. These, though not specific to a task or direct application, lead to studies that help avoid difficulties. We have found that filling these blank places and the unions of apparent structure are needed for confidence…or as motives for re-structuring and developing alternative hypotheses and theories. Alig (1989) discussing difficulties of strategic research planning in the US Forest Service, noted new demands, reduced funds, increased competition for such funds, and a feeling that research results often do not support management activities as well as they might. These make unlikely a good match between findings and the things that practitioners need. Jeffers (1988) said that "the very long time-scale of even a single rotation of a forest crop makes research expensive and hard to organize for continuity…Although not always recognized as such, forest research is one of the hardest disciplines to foster, requiring an exceptional ability to organize research resource and to manage and understand complexity."
Improving the match is needed and it seems possible through plans now in the foundation, in various ways suggested in the book Forest Faunal Systems, and through commonsense tactics like coordinating studies among Rural System Tracts to produce efficiencies. Having the Trevey (Chapter 19) as a hungry place for storing and adding findings to models has to be the most evident place for beginning to use results and unify them with knowledge gained from to past, to sift and condense, and to continue to build and revise the structure for such knowledge. It is daunting to decide where to place a finding, trivially to "file it," for it may be lost, better-used elsewhere, the small key to a realm but hung in the wrong place. Where to store findings about hiking trail campfire circle impacts is an example of the problem. Should such a finding be filed under trails, camping, environmental impacts, area restoration, outdoor recreation, wilderness area use, wildlife, erosion, soil compaction and bulk density, the Appalachian Trail, recreationists' behavior, vandalism (illegal campfires) or law enforcement? Answering "all of them" begs the question and adds the question of the costs and delays of creating and then storing all of the links and the costs of later screening when so many links are encountered in a search for useable equations for revising or creating land use models.
Knowing the results are likely to be used in models begins to shape the answer for the future as does a known use in a dynamic prescriptive or planning system begin to answer the question about useable knowledge. Because decisions are intrinsic to the studies system, there is a strong, persistent emphasis on levels of truth or uncertainty, on risk-taking behavior, singly and in groups. Studying risk and risk taking is as important in Rural System's studies work as that on fish or the water content of snow. Managing any Rural System is a game played against nature, the markets, and social forces.
In the foundation, studies, not research, are done. A knowledge base is self-consciously being built along with the means to use that knowledge. The base includes facts from formal studies, expert estimates, rules, procedures, heuristics, algorithms, operational theories … even the kernels of truth that may lie hidden in or are the core of "old wives tales" and folklore. Research has a narrow meaning for many people. Only findings from narrow, piecemeal, formal research are held by them to be "good." From Chapter 5 we learn that how we know has many bases, comes from many places. We work on a system, a knowledge base of high-belief statements, but also one with the means to manipulate, structure, store, retrieve, evaluate, disseminate, and use them. Our studies system is not a research system, but standing by the precision of that argument will not allow us to stand in the way of continuing "research" if funds are offered to do so leading to our objectives.
The manager of Tract 25 handed out cards to visitors, suggesting that they contact the Memorials Group that offered to arrange studies with payoffs that would honor friends, family members, or employers. A dozen studies suggested on the card were:
Readers who are familiar with farms or fields can probably already feel, at least at some level of an evident TV program plot, the looming conflict. The conditions being made perfect for foxes and thus for income from tours and all of the associated things described above, are also perfect for bobwhite quail (Colinus virginianus). That bird, once the southeastern states' leading game bird, is in decline and a few people have banded together on its behalf. Quail Unlimited stumbles along in the Ducks Unlimited pathway, already cut deep and narrow. The loss of quail has been decried from legislative halls. The pitiful springtime call of the bachelor males now graces few fields. The bird has disappeared over many areas, not because of poisons, genetic inbreeding or because of introduced "bad genes;" not because of excessive predators, free-running dogs, now-federally-protected crows, or poachers. They are no longer abundant because their habitat is gone. There are no more fallow fields, no more fencerows, no more winter grains. All is now pines and pastures, open fields and electric fences, fields as large as the farm itself, "slick as a whistle" all winter long. There is no longer the bobwhite whistle as part of the landscape.
A Divergence
Near the center of each enclave was placed a slanted box that gradually dispensed grain as it was removed by birds and rodents. It was only stocked during deep snows. Also, there were specially constructed brush piles, more like "huts" or lean-tos than piles. Under them grain was scattered by the managers during deep snows. They were conversation pieces and off-season outdoor action. One manager claimed that they were not for the quail but just for teaching. They inspired more discussions about quail and their food and habitat needs than any other tactics that they used. Quail can be raised in pens and thousands have been raised and released into the wild. The feeder seemed too constructed, too human…at the edge of unwildness. The formed brush piles came close. "When is a bird wild?" Some asked, fearing the limit had been passed, and others yelled back, "Who cares?"
"Semi-domesticated" as part of the definition of wildlife management had rarely been used, but was needed. Wildlife resource managers knew that they could produce more animals like pheasants and quail in game farms than in the wild" at many time less cost per bird if all costs were counted. They rarely were (land, management, foregone taxes, cultural needs, recreational support and advertising, law enforcement) and so wild birds seemed to be a gift of nature. Yet there is a dimension of wildness that is essential to the very nature of the resource. In the hand, a bird from the game farm cannot be distinguished from a bird from the wild, yet they are different (or only a suspected difference) and some people know the difference and are willing to invest to retain that difference, some even to invest in increasing the birds, at least greatly reducing the risk of losses of groups of them. The enclave is not natural, not seen on the average farm. They are specially created units to retain and enhance quail populations that have been reared in relatively natural conditions, suffering the assaults of field conditions, retaining survival abilities, even in smaller groups than in the past. Wildness is important. Quail raised in the wild are unlikely to be domesticated (as some songbirds or squirrels at feeders). Wildness is unlikely to be lost as feared by Starker Leopold for wild turkeys raised in game farms for release. The thoughtful wildlife manager continually debates the nature of wildness and its limits. At what density of animals does wildness seem to disappear as animals become abundant, often become pests, and are no longer game or part of the wild but of neutral or negative value? Black bear for many people in the Pacific Northwest have reached that point. Wild turkeys approach it. White-tailed deer have surpassed it for many people, especially suburbanites.
I have had long discussions with students, many from foreign lands, about whether "management," if done, itself compromises the definition of the animal population being wild. It remains a good discussion topic. I find that all populations of animals in the US and probably the rest of the world are now influenced by human actions taking place for over 10,000 years. Wilderness lakes are polluted, oceans depleted of fish stocks, ice caps melting, the spew of atomic bomb experiments forever degrading, ground waters contaminated. Thus, no animals or their ecosystems can any longer be wild, if that means free of human influence on their behavior, anatomy, or physiology. After that, words like "significant" and "major" need to be used as qualifiers for influences, thus degrees of wildness. Fancy combinations of letters like "anthropogenic" carry no water.
I walked away along a hedgerow between two triangular fields toward a corner covert, pleased with having flushed a covey and disgusted by my professorship's relentless attention to using precise words. This is just outdoors, wild, beautiful, natural, and working together. It is a wonderful vital place for me and my birds and my fox tracks. I call it what I want to, not kill my joy with analysis.
A More Important Conflict
There is a difference on many Rural System Tracts. On the foxy area there are quail… and lots of them. The density is at its highest recorded, one bird per acre. They occur in coveys or groups of 4 to 8 birds, but on the 50 acres that can be considered their habitat, there are ten coveys in early summer. Few people are counting; few observe regularly over the same areas; few areas have remained the same. Many people (half of those once living on the farms where there were quail) now live in cities. Few have realized the 4% decline in quail over 50 years; decreasing hunters and increasing TV viewers who cared little. A place where quail are abundant is a relic. The Covey Group of Rural System realized this and worked on Tract 25. Rareness has value.
Managers like to discuss multi-species management. The Tract 25 managers discussed their intensive dual-species management, balancing a high abundance predator-prey system for profit. They achieved their personal cost effectiveness by regional work, the economies of scale gained there, marketing support, and the two-species diversification. They had a backup knowledge base (hard to imagine) of over 5 million dollars of research on the quail. The profits were coming from the enterprise selling resource benefits, not fox pelts and quail-breast dinners. "Non-consumptive resource" of the literature and conferences was as ugly sounding as meaningless. Having adequate quail numbers was a condition for local profitability. The quail-related gains were from hikes, diverse tours (including bird watcher tours to add the bird to a life list.), lectures, consulting for developing similar land use units, bird dog trials, photographs of birds and dogs, art sales including feather art, and publications.
Foxes eat quail. Predation, especially under modern conditions, is the major suppressing factor to quail populations that remain vigorous in appropriate habitat. Under the best conditions, individual quail do not live long. The long-lost question for the manager has been: "how many quail do you need?" It has been lost because the answer was always assumed to be "more" and usually the question of cost was not asked for it was always assumed that it would be answered by: "I'll not be able to spend very much." For the manager, it was clear that a constant but low population of quail was needed to assure sightings of coveys and sounds of calling birds. That was all! The demand was relatively low. It was useful to the investing owner for the manager to modify demand for abundance so that it was not over that which nature has shown feasible in many studies. Over investment was as unwise, probably more so, than under investment in the quail resource. The only change in the total management plan, at first for foxes, was to reduce the size of two large fields (simply by mowing and time of fallow conditions), adding a condition to the computer model to assure three grain fields in every year, and to remove skunks (key nest predators) when the track count reached a peak number. Fallow fields were mowed in irregular patterns in the early spring to provide superior insect abundance for chicks. Covey Group wire cages were added in some fields for protecting birds from avian predators in small feeding areas. The managers had written a book for sale on how to manage quail, and every technique could be demonstrated on the Tract. Tours of the area and techniques were conducted for specialists. The local restaurant and bed-and-breakfast owners benefited.
The Covey Group worked with other Tract owners and quail numbers increased where the conditions were right as part of the farm management plan. Some featured quail hunting, others limited interests to quail as a regular part of the property personality and beauty, part of the view- and sound-scape. Some owners seemed to define their farmland as "real" only if it had quail, and so they added constraints to computer systems used to plan how to increase profits from their farm. Pasture, forest, and crop production on their ownerships was conditional or constrained, subject to having conditions for one covey of quail each year. If needed, they could ask for the opportunity cost of such a decision. What amount of money did they forego from the normal market of farm products to have quail? "Too much" seems to have been the assumed answer for farmland owners across the southeastern US where the quail was so prominent as a farmland bird. "How much does habitat creation or improvement cost?" as rarely been asked or answered for it is usually done only on government-owned lands. No one counts the cost of land itself in the area in which quail habitat is created and maintained. That failure in accounting has been a faunal-system flaw, now bubbling to the surface.
Farmland can be preserved and put into Trusts or otherwise maintained in some farm. It will not just happen for in the East, any area left alone and not "farmed" will be eventually (and soon, less than 100 years) be revegetated in hardwood cover. If current or even historical farm conditions are desired, e.g., having quail and foxes, then the lands must be managed carefully. Management tends to have has high cost but may potentially have high returns. Working funds must come from somewhere. Unlikely from adequate or sustained flow from the tax coffers or generous benefactors having growing social demands, the money must come in a relatively constant flow from a rural entrepreneurial system.
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