Attitudes Toward Bobwhite and Other Grassland Bird Conservation and Incentive Programs in Texas
Creators: name: Peterson, Markus J.
name: Horn, Sarah E.
name: Valdez, Rene X.
name: M. Nils Peterson
name: Miller, Danielle
name: Perez, Robert M.
name: Tarla Rai Peterson
Publisher: name: figshare
Year: 2019
Subjects: subject: 50202 Conservation and Biodiversity
subject: FOS: Biological sciences
subject: FOS: Biological sciences
subject: Ecology
subject: 50205 Environmental Management
subject: FOS: Earth and related environmental sciences
subject: FOS: Earth and related environmental sciences
subject: Environmental Science

description: A vast body of ecological research addressing northern bobwhites (<i>Colinus virginianus</i>) exists across this species’ range. State wildlife agencies have regulated bobwhite hunting for a century or more in most states where the species is hunted, and in some cases have expended considerable treasure on bobwhite conservation. Moreover, wildlife conservationists actively manage numerous private and public properties specifically to benefit bobwhites, and have done so for decades. Yet despite all this activity, northern bobwhite abundance has declined across this species’ range for roughly a century, declines are well documented since the 1960s, and this trend continues even in states where the species is most common, such as Texas. Abundance of other grassland bird species show similar trajectories. Although numerous factors may be proximate causes of declining bobwhite abundance, most bobwhite ecologists agree the ultimate cause of these declines is landscape scale loss of suitable habitat that can support all bobwhite life requisites through time. In Texas, these losses primarily are related to (1) lack of fire in modern landscapes, (2) grazing practices, (3) invasive exotic vegetation, and (4) habitat fragmentation due to the previous three factors as well as land ownership fragmentation, suburbanization, and changes to cultivated croplands. Unfortunately, most habitat management tends to occur at a finer spatial scale, and harvest management at a broader spatial scale, than is relevant to bobwhite populations (many Texas properties intensively managed for bobwhite hunting are an exception to this second generalization). Regardless, considering the vast amount of biological data already available addressing bobwhite ecology, more such data are unlikely to lead to changes in the trajectories of bobwhite populations. Instead, any hope of halting or reversing this decline in abundance requires social science that focuses on societal factors underlying conservation policy, because private land management is critical to bobwhite conservation as most bobwhites occur on private lands. We narrowed this gap by completing a two-phase social science study of private land managers in Texas. The first phase used focus groups to discover how primary stakeholders experience and think about northern bobwhites and other grassland bird conservation in Texas. The second phase of the study used the results of the thematic analysis of focus group data to refine questions for a survey instrument, which then was implemented and the data evaluated.