Upland Game Bird Management Account Projects

The ring-necked pheasant is one of California’s most prized game birds, but hunter success and harvest has greatly declined. A comprehensive assessment of the pheasant population status and possible factors related to population trends in California has not been conducted in nearly 25 years. This information is needed to guide management of pheasant populations and their habitats in California.

The proposed restoration effort will improve 92 acres of upland nesting cover on the Upper Butte Basin Wildlife Area’s Llano Seco Unit. The restoration effort will develop a robust stand of dependable perennial grasses associated with the remaining historic sloughs which are inundated throughout the year.

Knoxville Wildlife Area consists of 21,000 acres dominated by oak woodlands and chaparral. The area's valley’s are infested with invasive exotic plant species including yellow star-thistle and medusa head. This project will eradicate these weeds from 60 acres at the southern boundary and replace them with native grasses.

Habitat use of ruffed grouse in California is only known from anecdotal or descriptive studies.The proposed project would generate a species distribution model (SDM) and conduct pilot field sampling and trend monitoring program design, covering the statewide distribution of Ruffed Grouse in California, in Del Norte, Humboldt, Mendocino, Siskiyou, Trinity, Tehama, and Shasta Counties.

This study will include field operations, data collection, and analytical approaches aimed at answering basic questions regarding upland game bird populations including pheasants and turkeys.

The proposed project would renovate a guzzler on Mt. Laguna by repairing/installing a new 500 gallon system by Rainmaker Wildlife Water Guzzlers and Escape Ramps, providing a source of water during prolonged drought, which will in turn benefit upland game birds and upland game bird hunters.

Assessment of Mountain Quail abundance and critical habitat is hindered by the lack of practical and efficient methods for counting birds and measuring dense, frequently impenetrable, chaparral vegetation. The Game Bird Research Group proposes to quantify the temporal patterns of Mountain Quail vocalizations that underpin abundance estimates derived from call counts.

In this project, Game Bird Research Group proposes to attain accurate coordinate locations for a sample of territorial male Sooty Grouse throughout Mendocino, Glenn, Lake, and Sonoma counties and use them to create a habitat suitability model that predicts the locations of additional breeding sites throughout the region.

The objective of this effort is to systematically visit developed water sites throughout the southern Regions of the state which may be man-made or natural springs or seeps, to ensure that they are functioning in an optimum fashion.

This project will restore a high-priority 34 acres floodplain on the Sul Norte Unit of the Sacramento River NWR by converting it from yellow star-thistle, black mustard, milk thistle, and annual rip-gut grasses to perennial grasses to benefit upland game bird species and other associated wildlife.