Protecting Habitat

[Peggy]

I am new to this group and am not sure this is the best place or my question, but need to start someplace. We have some acreage in southwestern Idaho and have had a lot of quail and pheasant this year.  We are building a house and will be doing some landscaping next spring.  We also have 10 acres in pasture for cows. I want to protect some area for the birds to encourage them to continue breeding and feeding here.  Any advice or direction on this subject would be appreciated. Thank you very much.
Peggy

[stewaw]

I remember part of a quote from one of my wildlife conservation classes that is very appropriate here.  It's from a fellow named Aldo Leopold who is widely credited as being the father of modern wildlife conservation.  To paraphrase/butcher the quote, I believe it goes " in order to have wildlife in your landscape you must first set aside wild areas within your landscape for them to live...."  To answer your specific question, take a hard look as it is now.  You say there are birds there so obviously the basics are there.  Identify what habitat the construction of your homesite and landscaping will remove.  By that I mean, 2 acres land clearing-removal of 1/2 acre of native plants etc...  Then identify other areas of your property where this same habitat exists and replace that which you removed.  In Wildlife management, this is called "mitigation". It is simply replacing (in SUITABLE habitat) that which was destroyed from the original site.  It has to be suitable habitat however since (for example) you cannot replace bottomland hardwoods by planting bottomland hardwood species on an upland site. The plants won't thrive there. Assuming that is taken care of there are some impacts which are difficult to mitigate against- for example Pheasants adapt well to humans constructing a home in their breeding territory but Sage Grouse do not. In your case, how about the cows?  Is the area being grazed now?  If so I wouldn't expect any negative impact provided the stocking rate is maintained. If it's native pasture that has only undergone hay harvesting in the past, then stocking with cattle will have an impact. May be positive but more likely to be negative.  Too many variables and not enough information to formulate a theory.

Good luck with your project and as a Biologist I applaud your desire to co-exist with your wild neighbors,
David

[mikken]

Do a google search on "ragweed quail" and you'll see that folks are actually purchasing ragweed seed to keep quail in their areas.

Good luck!