Have you ever tried so hard to engineer an outcome that you made the problem worse?

We had quail experts Dylan Jacobs from Quail Forever in Missouri, and Clint Johnson, from the AGFC’s quail program back on the show this week to get into what’s working and what’s not when it comes to restoring the Ozark’s quail populations.

What they shared is a principle any Ozarker who cares about conservation can live by.

In today's edition:

Let's get into it.

— Kyle

Last week, Clint and Dylan helped us understand why quail have all but vanished from the Ozarks. We learned how the landscape has changed over decades (and how Bambi may have been propaganda).

This week, they told us what’s being done to bring them back and what’s working.

Here were three big takeaways from the conversation:

A lot of wildlife management is built on the same principles as monocropping.

The logic: if you want corn, manage for corn. If you want quail, manage for quail. Dedicated programs, targeted species-specific management.

But if you over-engineer one piece of the system, you often lose all of it. Clint said, in Missouri, they saw areas that managed for the whole ecosystem saw more quail returning than areas that were dedicated to the birds alone.

"The places they were managing for prairie, not quail, had more quail than the places they were managing for quail.

Dylan told us about a guy in Crawford County who cut every cedar off a glade on his place and started burning. He wasn't doing it for quail. He just wanted to fix his land.

Now he can hear quail from anywhere on his farm.

Turns out the seed bank was already in the soil. Native plants survive in ditches and power line right-of-ways because those spots can’t be farmed. When you put sunlight and fire back on the ground, they come up.

If we manage for prairie, the way the Ozarks used to look, the quail naturally come back. So do the deer, the turkey, the butterflies and songbirds, too. It’s a bit of a paradox: when we stop making “getting them back” the end-all-be-all goal and focus on habitat, they come back as the proof things are working.

To see the Northern Bobwhite thriving in the Ozarks again would be a dream come true. They’re in my conservation trifecta along with the Ozark Chinquapin and the Neosho Bass.

But a big takeaway from this conversation (and a theme we’ve seen over and over again in these conservation-focussed episodes) is that we have to approach this holistically.

Eric Naas said it back in a conversation on the Neosho, and I think it applies here, too.

"You can't stock your way out of bad habitat."

So whether quail are your passion project species or not, investing in healthy habitat will have a positive impact on all the critters we love to chase around these hills.

Here are a few ways you can take action if you’re able:

Here are the timestamps if you want to jump to specific parts of the episode.

0:00 – Last episode recap: History of Quail
6:00 – Can we bring quail Back?
9:00 – How to assess quail viability on your property
16:00 – Habitat needs for quail
23:00 – Quail success stories
37:00 – Does trampling improve land?
50:30 – The cultural shift that needs to take place
55:30 – Word of advice to land owners

🎧 If you like platforms other than YouTube, find The Ozark Podcast on Apple, Spotify, and the rest.

A few headlines from around the Ozarks that caught our eye this week. If you need talking points for the front porch this weekend, here's some ammo.

We'll be back next week with more stories from the Ozarks.

Til then,
Kyle Veit