Bobwhite quail got a boost from some high-powered friends Wednesday at the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission's monthly work meeting in Little Rock.
Arkansas State University offered vital educational support to the AGFC's quail restoration efforts.
Cynthia Miller and Michael Dougan addressed the commission about their initiative, as did Shane Broadway, ASU's vice president. Miller is director of the ASU Delta STEM Education Center. Dougan is a professor of history emeritus at ASU, and he is particularly interested in quail.
Miller said that the Delta STEM Education Center incorporated Arkansas' quail hunting history and heritage into its curriculum thanks to grants from the Arkansas Humanities Council and from the AGFC. The Arkansas Humanities Council grant was worth $45,000, which was used to train teachers and to hatch 50 quail eggs from several quail subspecies.
The AGFC grant was $6,000, which came from the sale of AGFC license plates. That grant provided $300 each to 20 teachers to purchase materials about the history and culture of quail in Arkansas.
STEM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, which encompass a wide range of topics.
"I don't stick to just those four subjects when I do my training," Miller said. "I try to broaden it. We were able to incorporate state department of education standards into investigations about quail."
A major component of that project had students accumulate oral histories of quail hunting from family members and neighbors. Quail hunting is a declining art in Arkansas, but there are still plenty of people around who remember its heyday in the Natural State.
"Many students had never heard of quail hunting and didn't know that was in their family heritage, but it was no trouble at all to find someone in their family and community who had been quail hunting and had bird dogs," Miller said.
Miller said the decline of quail in Arkansas irritates her personally and academically.
"As a scientist and a nature lover, and as person who grew up with quail hunting, it appalls me that their numbers have declined so exponentially in the last four decades," Miller said. "I want to see if there is any way we can stop that flow and bring that back. One way is to start at the grass-roots level with middle-school children."
The AGFC and the National Bobwhite Conservation Initiative are working to create quail habitat in the state, but such projects will only be successful if people relate to them personally. That's why the educational component is vital, Dougan said.
"You've got a big project at Pea Ridge [National Battlefield]," Dougan said. "What we are proposing is from the bottom up in school districts, with family and administration support."
The Pea Ridge Quail Focal Area revolves around efforts by the National Park Service to restore the Prairie Grove Battlefield to its appearance in the 1860s. That includes removing large numbers of eastern red cedar trees and restoring native grasses.
Groups such as the 4-H Club and Future Farmers of America can get involved with quail restoration projects and monitor them, Dougan said.
By working under a humanities grant, Delta STEM has introduced students to classic quail hunting literature by writers such as Nash Buckingham, who often hunted in Arkansas, and also to Robert Ruark, by way of his association with Ernest Hemingway, Dougan said. Hemingway has a strong Arkansas connection, and he was also one of the most prolific outdoor writers of his time.
"This is another important part of education, understanding those great outdoor writers and the stories they told," Dougan said.
Through this program, students even performed Miss Bob White, a comedy opera by Willard Spencer that includes "The Quail Song."
After the presentation, Game and Fish Commission Chairman Emon Mahony of El Dorado appointed a subcommittee devoted to quail consisting of Ken Reeves of Harrison and Ford Overton and Andrew Parker of Little Rock. Reeves will serve as chairman. Mahony said the subcommittee can facilitate efforts between private landowners and the AGFC's private lands management staff.
Volumes of peer-reviewed research about quail management are available, so the subcommittee doesn't need to start from scratch, Mahony said.
"There's no need reinvent the wheel on what is good quail habitat," Mahony said. "There's a lot of good information out there."
Sports on 01/24/2016