SE Quail Study Group meeting in Columbia

With the first ever Joint Meeting between the Southeast Quail Study Group and the Southeast Partners in Flight set to go down in history on 3/25 in Columbia, Lowcountryoutdoors.com flew like a bird to the Midlands to attend. SCDNR's Billy Dukes is the chairman of the South East Quail Study Group (SEQSG) and was charged with hosting the joint meeting at the Marriott Hotel in downtown Columbia, a task that he handled easily. All the "old" players were on hand from the Southeastern states to continue their conversations on bob white quail and the rest of the grassland songbird team, but they were armed with "new data" in the form of the first ever U.S. State of the Birds report released one week ago by the Secretary of the Interior. The report recognizes that bird groups like SEQSG and Partners In Flight (PIF) are already coming together for landscape habitat management projects for both game and non-game species. PIF's Landbird Conservation Plan is already in place to compliment the National Bobwhite Conservation Initiative (NBCI) - and it seems that the Bob White is being drafted as the "face" of the entire grassland songbird movement. Acronyms aside, this meeting was packed full of information for land managers and is worthy of in depth coverage, so look for the feature article in the 4/8 edition of the Charleston Mercury  newspaper.