A Bobwhite Declaration: Envisioning NBCIs Next Decade

By Don McKenzie, NBCI Director (Adapted from a plenary presentation at the National Bobwhite Technical Committee Annual Meeting, Abilene, TX, August 8, 2012)

Ten years ago, the bobwhite conservation world transformed. When the National Bobwhite Conservation Initiative (NBCI) was published in 2002, no one could foresee where it would lead, or how far it might take us. But, thanks to the NBCI, the collective quail conservation world clearly is more energized, organized, focused and productive than ever. But, just as the quail conservation star was rising, the NBCI hit a perfect storm. The U.S. economy collapsed into an extended recession. State wildlife agency budgets and staff were cut sharply, reducing the states capacity at the very time the NBCI needed increased investment and action. Charitable giving to conservation organizations likewise ebbed. Meanwhile, bobwhites continue to decline in every single state across the species range. We mark the NBCIs 10th anniversary this year with mixed feelings, acknowledging our unprecedented progress and successes, even in the context of conflicting gains and challenges. However, the more important question for the NBCI relates to the next 10 years. To stimulate strategic thinking and introspection by many who share the passion for bobwhites and grassland birds, I offer the following aggressive and optimistic vision for how the next decade could and should unfold for the NBCI. This vision is built upon the NBCIs big-picture pyramid strategy that highlights the multiple, interdependent layers of partnership engagement and collaboration necessary for ultimate success.

I.

Vision for the NBCI plan and initiative NBCI The NBCI plan and initiative become universally embraced across the bobwhite range as the unifying national vision for bobwhite restoration. The bobwhite conservation community has made significant progress toward shared goals and readiness to pull together in the same direction, but we are not yet as unified as our complex mission requires. Implementation Strategy We complete a new NBCI implementation strategy, or action plan, to solidify a sense of team among the National Bobwhite Technical Committee (NBTC) and all quail enthusiasts, clearly identifying key needs and important roles for all who can help. When our community does finally pull together, we will achieve a mutually beneficial synergy and a level of effectiveness for the resource beyond anything that we have ever imagined.

Accountability The NBTC institutionalizes a culture of accountability for bobwhite and grassland bird conservation. The entire quail community more consistently sets goals and objectives, sets itself up to succeed, measures performance and routinely adjusts for improvements. The outcome of such strengthened accountability and adaptability will be to establish higher standards of achievement and credibility for states and quail managers.

II.

National-level vision U.S. Economy Some factors vital to quail restoration are beyond our control. This vision optimistically trusts that the United States economy rebounds within the next 10 years, allowing improved budgets and capacity to foster federal, state, local and private conservation functions. NBTC The functionality of the National Bobwhite Technical Committee (NBTC) is fully within our control. The entire NBTC will be firing on all cylinders within the next 10 years. Following a period of major growth and transformation the NBTC currently is larger and stronger than ever. The NBTC is accepted as the single, unified technical group across the U.S. range of the northern bobwhite. The NBCI appropriately is a technical committee of the states, led mostly by the states, but is open to and inclusive of all bobwhite conservationists, managers and scientists. The NBTC is composed of the elected Steering Committee, a set of working subcommittees with Chairs, a general membership, and the NBCI staff. The NBTCs functionality and impact are growing, but remains below its needed effectiveness as a catalyst and agent of leadership, collaboration and collective progress. The NBTC is still in transition from its tradition of an annual working meeting, with a second mid-year Steering Committee meeting. The time throughout the rest of the annual cycle traditionally was slower and less productive. The challenges of NBCI implementation and the urgency imposed by the continuing decline of bobwhites require more business-like productivity. The NBTC as a whole must become a group that leads fluently, works aggressively on priorities and conducts business (including extra meetings) as needed throughout the year. All the NBTC parts Steering Committee, all the subcommittee Chairs, all the subcommittee members, the entire general membership, and the NBCI staff must work seamlessly and synergistically together, year-round, to more effectively address our priorities. NBTC Steering Committee The Steering Committee provides increasingly assertive, influential and visionary leadership. It more effectively identifies priority needs and sets goals, while pressing for progress and accountability from its subcommittees, members and NBCI staff. The Steering Committee also interacts more fluently with the NBCI Management Board, as each group one technical and the other administrative continually nudges the other forward.

NBTC Subcommittees The NBTC subcommittees will become strong and active sources of leadership for NBCI implementation, developing aggressive action plans and charges for themselves and the full-time NBCI staff in their respective contexts of the overall strategy. The NBTCs working subcommittees are the bobwhite brain trusts for key issues and functions, as well as sources of energy, motivation and action. The subcommittees are intended to be the engines behind the moving parts of the NBCI. The subcommittees are intended to become national conservation leaders in their respective disciplines, embracing their roles in the NBCI vision, and taking full ownership of their responsibility for catalyzing progress. The subcommittees are intended to become fluent in identifying needs, setting priorities and providing oversight and guidance to their respective NBCI staff. It is impossible to overstate the importance of this aspect of the long-term NBCI vision. As the NBTC subcommittees strengthen and grow into their intended leadership roles, our unified quail machine will function more efficiently and with more effect. In the meantime, the current NBCI staff must and will continue full speed ahead, making every effort to seek guidance and collaboration from the NBTC subcommittees at every step. But NBCI staff does not and cannot wait for NBTC subcommittees to grow into their roles. This situation may prompt occasional questions about who is in control of the machine but if the NBCI is to err, it will err on the side of assertiveness.

NBCI staff The NBCI team becomes fully staffed for high speed operation on all priority fronts, as potent executors of the NBTC subcommittees action plans and objectives. NBCI staff work primarily at regional and national levels to (1) remove barriers, (2) create opportunities, (3) seize opportunities and (4) provide key central services for the greater good, that no other quail entity can or will do. NBCI staff do not exist to do the states or local partners work for them; that would be an impossible expectation. Allies at those levels must become capable of addressing the priority needs at their levels. NBCI staff is available, however, to assist individual states and local partners on a case-by-case basis for specific important tasks. Current high-priority needs which likely will remain high priorities for the NBCI for the next 10 years, and for which national staff capacity is crucial, include: o federal grassland habitat conservation advocacy (with an emphasis on agriculture conservation policy) o science coordination among all states and partners o central data management and services o forestry management coordination o native grassland restoration coordination in the East o native rangeland management coordination in the West o prescribed fire promotion o mine lands reclamation coordination.

NBCI 2.0 Conservation Planning Tool The NBCI 2.0 database, engineered by Dr. Theron Terhune, grows into its potential as the central platform for all bobwhite data compilation and management for states step-down planning; focus area planning and documentation; habitat tracking; bird monitoring; and data analysis and reporting. The value of the NBCI 2.0 to states and partners and, ultimately, the resource increases with each additional increment of functionality of our data center. NBCI Management Board This high-level guidance and support body of agency administrators and organization leaders matures in its leadership responsibility to more effectively guide and support the NBCI and NBTC. The Board helps NBCI implementation in at least these ways: o guide, affirm and support NBTC and NBCI directions, priorities and activities; o wield high-level power to help the NBCI solve problems and create opportunities at regional and national levels; o sharpen the introspective focus required to elevate the priority and effectiveness of quail restoration within all member agencies. Bobwhite Foundation The new Bobwhite Foundation, housed within the University of Tennessee Foundation, becomes amply funded with an energized and committed development board that steadfastly focuses on implementing NBCI priorities, per the vision and technical leadership of the NBTC, the CNGM and the NBCI Management Board. At that point, the foundations endowment will provide full and stable support to enable the NBCI and the Center for Native Grassland Management (CNGM) to operate at top speed for the long term. The foundation aims to make a bigger pie, by securing new bobwhite conservation money, contributed by unique people with passion, means, big-picture vision, and the desire to make a positive bobwhite impact at regional and national levels. Slicing the existing bobwhite conservation funding pie into ever-thinner pieces adds no value, thus the Bobwhite Foundation avoids diversion of funds already dedicated to worthwhile state- and local-level quail conservation.

III.

State-level vision State Economies State wildlife agencies will rebound in the next decade, enabling improved budgets and renewed staff capacity, while providing a refreshing opportunity for states to re-assess traditional priorities in the context of urgent contemporary needs. Like the U.S. economy, this point is beyond our control, yet is a key component of a successful 10-year vision. State Leadership The NBCI state agencies stand up and take charge over the next decade as a group and within each of their respective states to fully embrace their stewardship responsibility and leadership role for bobwhite restoration. Top-down leadership among the states, as well as within individual states, would reinforce

longstanding technical-level leadership, creating an overdue synergy surpassing current capabilities. State wildlife agencies are the core of the entire NBCI; without their determined and persistent leadership, no amount of effort by any other partners can muster the power to achieve widespread restoration of huntable bobwhite populations. States cannot do it by themselves, but no other quail conservation partners can do it without the states. NBCI State Administrative Model As a group and within the respective individual states, an NBCI state administrative model becomes the new standard business model for how states set themselves up to succeed in grassland bird restoration. For example, states will acknowledge such needs to: o re-prioritize programs, staff and budgets to contemporary priorities such as quail and grassland bird restoration; o establish a state interagency quail council for coordination and collaboration; o establish a state-level quail foundation to raise and target funds for habitats; o build essential quail capacity, such as: Full-time quail coordinator Full-time agriculture liaison Full-time habitat forester (in the appropriate states) Full-time habitat agronomist A capable network of private lands biologists o aggressively implement well-designed focus areas o document, demonstrate and celebrate successes. State Quail Coordinators As individual states quail leadership grows, the longundervalued state quail coordinator position rises in stature and prestige, and benefits from the heightened capability that arises with increased program funding and travel authority. Interstate Collaboration States solidify the constructive new habit of working together for bobwhites. They fluently collaborate on habitat strategies and policies, data collection needs and methods, and central data compilation and analysis. States are more engaged with joint ventures and more attentive to influencing federal spending for grassland birds. The ongoing NBCI model focus area program, led by the NBTC Research Subcommittee, is starting by developing standard NBCI focus area monitoring protocols for voluntary use by all states. This task is a premium example of NBTC leadership and interstate quail collaboration, that will take the NBCI to a new level of accountability and credibility. Valid, credible monitoring data will provide documented success stories, instill confidence and hope, reinforce agency resolve and ultimately shore up the longterm viability of the entire quail restoration movement. Other State Resource Agencies In the next decade, the state wildlife agencies will be effectively engaging other state resource agencies as substantive partners. USDA state

offices, state forestry commissions, soil and water conservation agencies, agriculture departments and natural heritage commissions can add meaningful value to bobwhite and grassland bird restoration if effectively engaged as valued partners in each state. States and Quail NGOs State wildlife agencies and non-government quail habitat organizations will fully, strategically, deliberately and earnestly partner for the benefit of the resource. Successful NBCI implementation demands that wildlife agencies and quail NGOs actively pull together state-by-state to share information and assets, achieve synergy and mutual benefits, and support each other to create a quail machine in each state that is stronger than the sum of its parts. The NBCI cannot and will not succeed if strategic and functional disconnects persist between state wildlife agencies and the active quail habitat NGOs in the respective states. To be clear, the needed machine-like efficiency of these core allies is dysfunctional when: o state agency quail coordinators and administrators do not know what the quail NGOs in their state are doing for quail and grassland birds; and/or o quail NGOs that are active in a state do not know what their state agency is doing for quail and grassland birds.

IV.

Local level vision NGO Capacity In the next decade, quail habitat NGO capacity equivalent to the caliber of Ducks Unlimited with DUs vision, leadership and demonstrated sense of team will be doing for the NBCI what DU has done with such impact for a quarter-century to help advance the North American Waterfowl Management Plan. In short, quail habitat NGO capacity will be strategically allied with states and the NBCI, becoming indispensable to NBCI implementation in every state. A powerhouse NGO capacity is a top-tier NBCI need in all states. This vital NGO capacity could be provided either by a single national quail organization, or 25 state-level organizations, or some combination. The future of the NBCI depends on the NGO capacity performing as determined and reliable pillars of the NBCI machine in each state, positively and constructively engaged in: o developing state quail initiatives, o supporting implementation of state initiatives with grassroots political support, money and manpower, and o adding value directly to state quail initiatives and focus areas. Quail hunters Legions of individual quail hunters are no longer going away, but are actively, positively and constructively involved in the quail conservation movement.

Quail hunters who retain hope, who are motivated and mobilized, and who are positive agents of change and progress in every state can play a pivotal role in shaping the future. Quail hunters, quail habitat NGOs and state wildlife agencies who hold one another in mutual high regard, who deal with each other respectfully, and who share a common vision can begin to reach goals that previously were out of reach. It should go without saying that the opposite is equally true. Quail hunters who either (1) go away, or (2) become negative agents of discord among their needed partners do not contribute to progress. Grassland conservation partners Myriad important partners who share the NBCIs vision for landscape-scale native grassland conservation continue strengthening the movement, including songbird conservationists (such as the NBCIs current valued partner, Partners in Flight), pollinator advocates, herpetology conservationists, other game organizations, native plant societies, etc. Bobwhites are one high-profile symbol of the public benefits of native grassland restoration; but the broad public values of restored native grassland ecosystems, themselves, transcend any single functional benefit. Landowners Agricultural producers and other landowners across the bobwhite range recognize and embrace wild quail as cool. Such enthusiastic landowners will be: o more receptive to habitat restoration overtures by states or NGOs, o more willing to accommodate quail habitat on working lands, o more likely to undertake habitat improvements with less or no funding, and o more likely to participate in cooperatives with their neighbors. Outdoor media The outdoor media stands up to embrace, adopt and take their share of ownership in the fate of the NBCI and the bobwhite quail. Their unique skills and abilities to contribute can make a potent constructive difference in building a popular movement with positive impacts.

V.

A real-time case study: opportunity and shortcoming

The 2012 drought across much of the central U.S. illustrates the potential power of this synthesized 10-year NBCI vision. The drought is a major crisis and hardship for many people, including livestock producers. The drought also is an opportunity for a major win:win solution achievable with sufficient national/state/local collaboration among quail interests, producers, landowners and political decision makers. USDA and Congress are already beginning to provide emergency aid to livestock producers. An important question is whether the aid will be in the form of solutions to the problems, or simply band-aids for the symptoms. The drought aid presents an opportunity to help livestock producers, solve problems and provide multiple long-term public resource benefits, simultaneously. The key is breaking the traditional USDA agronomic addiction to aggressive, introduced pasture forages by helping producers restore some 20-33% of their ravaged pasture acreage to drought-resistant native, warm-season grasses that benefit both cows and quail. This

is a winnable opportunity that makes technical sense, economic sense, conservation sense and public accountability sense. With hundreds of thousands maybe millions of pasture acres at stake, the drought is an uncommon opportunity to reconnect cows and quail on a very large landscape scale. For the quail community to take full advantage of this opportunity requires coordinated, effective and timely action at national, state and local levels: National level A flexible NBCI federal advocate with credibility and access to USDA and Congress could initiate and influence the conversation with a broad suite of key decision makers. A NBCI Grassland Coordinator with technical credibility and access to the livestock and forage communities simultaneously could build complementary support and momentum from key constituencies and partners. State level Every state wildlife agency could be fully engaging their state USDA offices, as well as other state resource agencies that work with livestock producers, to optimize the win:win opportunity. NGOs could reinforce the need and opportunity with all the state agencies, with political support, funds and manpower. Local level Private lands biologists of states and NGOs could be rallied to provide technical assistance and public awareness, especially in priority areas. NGO chapters, sportsmens clubs and individuals could be engaging landowners to build support while providing funds and manpower. The outdoor and agriculture media could raise the profile of the opportunity and support the long-term solutions.

Despite the magnitude of the opportunity, the quail community comes up short; we are not yet ready to fully capitalize on this prime moment. We do not yet have the necessary integrated horsepower at all levels or across the affected geography. The NBCI and some of our partners will do our best with what we have, but are handicapped by our capacity shortcomings. And no other national conservation initiative or coalition seems willing or able to pick up our slack. Thus, the final outcome of this opportunity born of disaster likely will not live up to the landscape-scale habitat restoration potential. Maybe we will be ready for the next big opportunity. How do we get where we need to get? A conviction of mutual dependency

VI.

I ask the NBCIs quail conservation friends, colleagues and allies to look around with open eyes and mind. Enjoy and feel gratified about our progress of the last 10 years, but keep the continuing decline of bobwhite populations foremost in our minds. Then ask ourselves two questions: 1. What more will it take to get us closer to something like the comprehensive vision for success that is described here? What are we prepared to do about it?

2.

I contend the entire bobwhite conservation community each and every one of us needs to develop and institutionalize a conviction of mutual dependency. The NBTC and its member states, organizations and institutes are overflowing with intelligence, experience and knowledge about bobwhite management. Further, the dedication and passion of quail hunters and bobwhite conservationists are unmatched. What remains to be seen over the next 10 years is whether the NBTC and the entire bobwhite community can muster the resolve, demonstrate the leadership, combine our resources, and build the effective teamwork up, down, and across the board that is essential for our ultimate success. People, politics and money are the underlying causes of the long-term quail problem, and ultimately will be the sources of the big solutions.