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Work Plan for the Wildlife Component

Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP) National Assessment

CP33 Upland Buffers Habitat Monitoring

USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) Notice CRP-479 provides policy for Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) continuous signup practice CP33-Habitat Buffers for Upland Wildlife.  The notice specifies that:

"A monitoring and evaluation plan must be developed in consultation with the state technical committee, including the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service, State Fish and Game agencies, and other interested quail parties.  The plan must provide the ability to establish baseline data on northern bobwhite populations and estimate increasing bobwhite populations and impact on other upland bird populations as a result of practice CP33, Habitat Buffers for Upland Birds, including implementing a statewide sampling process that will provide reliable estimates of the number of bobwhites per acre (or some other appropriate meas­ure) before practice CP33 is implemented (baseline) and the number resulting from the established CRP cover."

The Research Committee of the Southeast Quail Study Group developed a national protocol for monitoring northern bobwhite response to CP33 that can be deployed through a combined effort of state offices of FSA/Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) and state resource management agencies in such a manner to: 1) provide statistically valid estimates of northern bobwhite density (or some other appropriate measure) on fields enrolled in CP33 at state, regional, and national levels, and 2) provide a measure of the relative effect of size of the CP33 practice (Burger et al. 2004).  Where these efforts yield reliable estimates of the response of northern bobwhite to upland buffer practices, such estimates will be acknowledged and captured by the CEAP Wildlife Component.

Literature Cited

Burger, L. W., M. R. Smith, R. Hamrick, B. Palmer, and S. Wellendorf.  2004.  CP33-Upland Habitat Buffers monitoring protocol.  Southeast Quail Study Group, Research Committee, 9/02/04 Draft. Accessed June 29, 2006.

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