The Southeastern Grasslands Initiative and Quail Forever officially signed a 5-year Memorandum of Understanding December 6, 2019, outlining the scope of a relationship that was initiated in 2018 and has already borne fruit: the Farm Bill team for the Resource Conservation Partnership Project (RCPP), which is supervised and based out of SGI headquarters on the APSU campus, are staff members of QF!
Photo shows from left to right: Dwayne Estes, Southeastern Grasslands Initiative Director; Tim Caughran, Quail Forever Director of Field Operations, Megan Hart, SGI/QF Farm Bill Wildlife Biologist; and Brittney Viers, SGI/QF Interior Plateaus Grasslands Coordinating Biologist.
The agreement recognizes that mutual support, cooperation, and assistance are beneficial in furthering both organizations’ missions of landscape conservation and ecological restoration because landscape conservation is inherently complex, occurs on multiple scales, and requires centralized coordination.
Some specific benefits shared between the parties include:
A member of QF’s staff will join SGI’s Scientific Advisory Board.
SGI and QF will conduct joint fundraising and associated activities.
Shared organizational expertise.
Shared communications resources and products, as appropriate.
“When these historic grasslands were prevalent throughout the Southeast, so were bobwhites” According to Tim Caughran, director of field operations for Quail Forever.
“Now, you'd be hard-pressed to find continuous, native grasslands of any size in Kentucky and Tennessee despite the fact that they were once dominant. Areas that were once strongholds for bobwhite quail are no longer producing and sustaining those populations. So, it's a no-brainer for Quail Forever to partner with the Southeastern Grasslands Initiative to restore this critical habitat component to our landscape. Our hope is that we can build momentum through the Grasslands RCPP grant and expand on our successes to other regions in the Southeast," added Caughran.
“Our partnership with Quail Forever is truly one that is creating synergy,” said Dwayne Estes, professor at APSU and Director of the Southeastern Grasslands Initiative.
“We could not reach out to landowners nearly as effectively without Quail Forever, and at the same time, SGI is providing the base, training, and facilities to bring back native grasslands in Tennessee and Kentucky. We hope to expand the geographic scope of this partnership model in the future.”