I was a resident volunteer on the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge for
two years shortly after it was established to reintroduce the "masked"
subspecies of bobwhite quail 20 years ago. The U.S. government spent $9
million for the 118,000-acre refuge and has spent an enormous amount of
money since then, trying to reintroduce these birds. Adult male bobwhite
were brought in to adopt masked bobwhite chicks and were vasectomized to
prevent interbreeding. (How many others among us have assisted in the
vasectomizing of quail? One of the many strange experiences of my
life.) I just googled and learned that of about 25,000 chicks introduced
to the refuge over the past 20 years, only 100-200 have survived, and it's
a constant fight to keep them alive.

About the same time, thick-billed parrots were being reintroduced into the
Chiricahua Mountains. From what I can find on Google, that seems to have
been a little more successful, though there are no dates on the material I
found, so I don't know how current it is.

The problem with just rounding up a bunch of critters and letting them
loose in their former area is that there is some reason they became
extirpated. The Carolina parakeet was hunted into extinction, but most
extirpated birds are gone because something in their habitat changed and
they couldn't survive in the area any longer. In most cases, the changes
were human-caused, and it's nearly impossible to restore a habitat back to
exactly like it was when the species flourished there. In the case of the
masked bobwhite quail, they were believed to need certain types of grass
and other native vegetation to survive. The refuge land had been stripped
of habitat by decades of ranching. When the Federal government bought it,
they removed all cattle from the land, to the great consternation of local
ranchers who had been leasing the land for generations, and let the native
vegetation return. Yet after 20 years of careful management, the birds
have not really taken hold.

Species need more than suitable tracts - they need an entire ecosystem of a
size that provides sufficient food and nesting space for them to live
comfortably. In the case of the western bluebird, my guess would be that
while there may be many tracts of suitable habitat for them, there isn't
sufficient contiguous habitat for them to be re-established. You might
think that bluebirds wouldn't need intense care, but you might also think
that given the right habitat, quail would happily take up residence. Yet
they haven't. An ecosystem is a complex mix of temperature and humidity,
sunlight and shade, food, predators, and other factors. It's near
impossible for anyone to say for sure exactly what any given species
requires, even after a lifetime of study.

In my bobwhite quail googling, I also learned to my absolute astonishment
that in 2004, Wayne Shifflett, manager of the Buenos Aires NWR from day 1,
got into a potload of trouble, was charged with Federal felonies, and ended
up being removed from his position, for moving 400 rare, threatened
Chiricahua leopard frog tadpoles to the refuge from a state pond that was
about to, and in fact shortly thereafter did, dry up, thus saving
them. The charges came because of a political tussle between him and
someone at Arizona Game and Fish. It's an astonishing story, and knowing
Wayne as I do, I can just see it. Wow.

In the current political environment of unlisting species, questioning
established science, and budget cuts for everything that doesn't involve
"spreading democracy" with bombs and a gun, I think the best we can hope
for is to continue to fight to maintain the health of the little habitat we
have left for the critters who have hung around, and hope eventually some
of the former residents will find their way back.

Mary Ann Chapman
Seattle

At 08:35 PM 6/5/2005, Johnson, Mary wrote:
>This talk about nighthawks begets a question that I've wanted to ask. Why
>is it that with extirpated birds, we can't just round up a bunch of them
>and let them loose in their former area to see if they will repopulate the
>place? Take the Western Bluebird, for example, which apparently was a
>regular resident in the Puget Sound area at one time; it seems like there
>are still many tracts of suitable habitat for them--although, granted, the
>nesting issue would have to be addressed. Anyway, that's just one example
>of a bird that wouldn't require the intense care of, say, a California Condor.
>
>I have already thought of several likely reasons why this sort of thing
>isn't done, particularly that we should consider the birds' welfare first,
>but I would love to hear what Tweeters have to say about it. We all know
>the horror stories about introduced species that wreak havoc in their new
>habitat (I'm looking at you, starlings and house sparrows!) but I haven't
>heard about re-introducing extirpated species.
>
>Mary Johnson
>Auburn, WA
>mjohnson at becu.org
>
>
>
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