Meet the new boss
Director Cameron F. Clark


http://www.in.gov/dnr/7701.htm#Director

Since Cam is a Pheasants Forever member I had a private chat with him about a month ago. He's quite the bird hunter and hopefully we can get him focused on working towards more quail, pheasant and grouse habitat and populations.

Oh, and he loves his birddogs!!!

HJ

Awesome!

I think that is the biggest challenge in wildlife management and hopefully the bird populations can get some help.

I hope sportsmen care enough to make it a priority..

You want more birds? Increase the habitat that they require to breed and have their young survive and thrive and produce young that do the same.

Try to get the farmers to not farm all the way up to the edge of everything and leave some room for the game to have travel lanes and places to hide from predators.

More habitat is the key to increasing game populations.

How many farm fields are not paved over with concrete? Plenty in my area. While there is still hundreds of acres of land a lot of what we use to have is paved over now.

Also I believe it might help to limit the number of predators that feed on quail and rabbits and other smaller animals that we like to hunt for food and fun.

Have you noticed how many hawks are around these days? And the number of Bobcats, coyotes are increasing every day. All these are wild predators that have to eat to survive. They eat the same rabbits and quail that we like to hunt. They also prey on waterfowl.

Moose go to your County SWCD Board Meetings Get Involved. The Money is there the Programs are there The thing missing on about every SWCD board in the State are board members interested in wildlife. Be an associate member find out how things work Every soil and water practice is wildlife friendly.. With Good Habitat predators are not the problem you would think

I'm a member of AGR fraternity and all the brothers talk about is the price of corn and beans and beef. Trying to encourage them to farm less ground is hard when they all have big bills to pay for seed and fertilizer etc. But I do my best to convince them to keep the fence rows in place and to conserve the soil and to avoid erosion. The county agents are out there talking to farmers all the time.

I'm doing what I can personally by trying to kill coyotes which are a major predator of quail, rabbits as well as mice and voles. So Coyotes are sort of good and bad. Good that they eat a lot of mice and vots and bad that they eat a lot of rabbits and other small game and game birds. Not to mention young fawns of the White Tail Deer.

My major at Purdue was Conservation of Natural Resources and Environmental Science. So my professional training is geared towards studying the environment. I at one time though about going into wildlife bilogy and took a lot of wildlife bilogy classes my Senior years. I met the current IDNR Fish and Wildlife Director in one of those classes. We had two different classes together my senior year. He like to hunt Deer and Turkey and bought a small farm where he plans on retiring to some day after he's finished working with IDNR. He said he has a few more things he would like to work on before he leaves IDNR. So we have the right professionals in the Fish and Wildlife Agency. We just need to convince the Governor and the State Legislatures to spend more money on Fish and Wildlife Activities in the state. Purdue does a good job helping the farmers in this State.

Looking over the Quail Priority areas last night and glad to see it's being looked at. But, having walked and hunted over a lot of ground in Morgan and Jefferson counties, surprised that where I no longer see nor hear quail, they are not on the list. Maybe an update would be in order.