Some 10,000 Mississippi hunters will go afield this year for bobwhite quail season.

Ensuring that quail remain a viable game bird in the Southeast is a major research goal of scientists at the university's Forest and Wildlife Research Center. Clearly, avian ecologist Wes Burger and his colleagues will be busy.

"Quail populations have been falling during the past three decades in the Southeast and currently are declining almost 4 percent each year," said Burger, an associate professor of wildlife and fisheries.

Changes in agricultural and forest practices have been a major factor in tipping the natural balance against the ground-feeding birds.

"Bobwhite thrive in areas with a mixture of weeds, grasses, and shrubs," Burger said. "Thirty years ago, fields of row crops, native grass, and annual weeds were well distributed among forested lands, creating a perfect habitat for bobwhite quail.

"Today's land use practices, such as increased field size and reduced brushy cover along field borders, have reduced the places where they can prosper, as well as the population size which an area can support."

To counter this trend, Burger and other MSU scientists teamed in 1996 with the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks to study the quail's response to habitat management.

The study used radio-telemetry tracking to monitor the response of quail to habitat changes and to track predators.

"Fall populations of bobwhite have increased from one bird per 13 acres to one bird per two acres in just three years," Burger said. "The results indicate that proper habitat management is the key to increasing quail populations."

Individual landowners wishing to increase quail populations on their property can use some simple management practices, Burger said.

"There is no fixed formula for quail management," Burger said. "But general practices include the intentional use of fence rows, hedge rows, idle grassy areas, and fallow annual weed patches to recreate a complex landscape."