QUAIL DECLINE: What some consider beautiful may create 
hardship for others ... details ahead on Passport to Texas.
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PTT from TPWD and the Wildlife Restoration Program

What would you call a vast expanse of finely groomed 
turf, punctuated by groupings of well-maintained trees 
free of unwieldy tangles of vegetative undergrowth? 

In one sense it's kind of an ecological desert, at least for 
grassland birds. :04

Such as quail. Robert Perez is the state quail biologist. 

There are huge areas of the state where we just don't have quail 
anymore; they've declined over the last thirty plus years. And 
it's not an issue of whether year to year what's going to make 
those populations come back. It's the issue of habitat. :11

Viable populations of quail can no longer be found in the 
Houston area, the blackland prairie region and east 
Texas. 

In the forties, East Texas was probably the quail region of the 
state. Back when land use practices were far different. But as 
time went on and technology changed, and farms went out and 
coastal Bermuda came in ... the landscape changed, and it was 
considered something not to be quail habitat. And now you'd 
be hard pressed to find very many quail in east Texas. They're 
pretty much an uncommon bird, as they are in the rest of the 
Southeastern United States. :22

Tomorrow: The Texas Quail Initiative.

The Wildlife Restoration Program supports our show, and 
provides funding for the Private Lands and Habitat 
Enhancement Program.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife ... I'm Cecilia Nasti.