QUAIL RECOVERY2: Working to keep quail viable in their home range ... details ahead on Passport to Texas ... _______________________________________________________ Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife Bobwhite quail and about 25 other species of grassland birds are declining nationwide. Conservation groups are concerned about these bird and consider changes in habitat to the primary reason for decline. "There's been a national reaction and action on a recovery plan for bobwhite quail across the southeast." Robert Perez is quail program leader for Texas Parks and Wildlife. "From the outcome of that, several states have developed their own step-down plans, including Texas. Our statewide recovery plan is called the Texas Quail Conservation Initiative." Since 1980, bobwhite quail populations in Texas have declined by 75 percent due to habitat loss and fragmentation. The Texas Quail Conservation Initiative is a strategy that brings together conservation groups, hunters, landowners and others, to halt and hopefully reverse this trend. "To be realistic, I don't think we're ever going to get it all back. But we can do what we can to preserve what's left, build on it, and get landowners and cooperatives that are really interested - state lands, federal lands, national forests - to become involved in holding on and expanding what we've got; for the sake of quail and those twenty five other species of birds. And more information can be found about that at our web site, if you do a search for our new document describing the plan, "Where Have All the Quail Gone?" " That's our show ... made possible by the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program ... funded by your purchase of fishing and hunting equipment and motor boat fuels For Texas Parks and Wildlife ... I'm Cecilia Nasti.