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ONLINE EXCLUSIVE
Are the good ol’ days gone?
After another morning without hearing a single gobble, Lackey Stephens looked at me and said, “I wonder where all the turkeys have gone?”
There’s a good chance if you have spent time in the woods of Arkansas, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi or even the turkey hunting mecca of Missouri during the last five years you too have asked that question. Many states, from the lower Mississippi River Valley to the East Coast, have reported declines in overall turkey populations.
The realities of declining reproduction are evident in a number of states. In Arkansas and Mississippi the annual wild turkey harvest has declined almost 40 percent during the last five years and in Missouri it has dropped 30 percent. Through the various survey methods it is clear that poult recruitment — young-of-the-year birds that mature into adult hens and gobblers — is also not occurring at a sufficient rate to replace normal population losses. Most experts agree that a ratio of three or more poults per hen is required for wild turkey population growth in the Southeast; a ratio of 2.3 poults per hen is required just to sustain the population. In the past five to seven years, poult recruitment in South Carolina and Georgia has been consistently below 2:1. This is a serious issue, and the NWTF, along with state game agencies, are doing something about it.
So what is going on? Where have all the turkeys gone?
If you had asked that question five years ago, wildlife biologists would have chalked up declines to predictable population fluctuation based on weather patterns. Eastern wild turkeys do not reproduce well when higher than normal rainfall occurs during the peak incubation and hatching periods.
For the most part, population declines earlier this decade were within the normal limits for this type of fluctuation. Most turkey biologists believed that with just a few “good” weather years wild turkey populations would bounce back. Unfortunately, expected rebound has not happened even with wetter than normal years in parts of the Southeast. Now we have a more serious issue that requires forensic research to identify the underlying reasons for this decline.
The NWTF and its team of biologists have been working with their colleagues in state agencies from the Midwest to the East Coast to review data, pool resources and share facts and opinions regarding the wild turkey declines. Most recently a group of wildlife biologists and wild turkey experts met in Arkansas, one of the hardest hit states, to discuss the issue. As we suspected, the list of potential causes is extensive.
A loss of quality brood and nesting habitat
Most wildlife managers agree that the lack of habitat improvement is the most likely culprit in the wild turkey population decline. But it’s not just that we aren’t improving habitat at a fast enough pace. We’re losing habitat, too.
Urban sprawl deprives turkeys and other wildlife of acres. When massive expansion — housing developments, shopping centers, commercial developments — takes place, such as that occurring around most major cities and suburbs, the loss of habitat on a landscape scale becomes a prime culprit. Land protection programs, such as the NWTF’s “More Places to Hunt,” are critical to the continued success of wildlife populations.
This very real habitat issue has crept in like a thief in the night, and many hunters, farmers and even wildlife managers have hardly noticed it. What’s 20 acres here, or 40 acres there? If you look at aerial photographs from the 1980s and ’90s and compare them to shots taken today, the loss of many tens of thousands of acres of wildlife habitat becomes obvious.
Weather
To coin an age-old phrase, “You can’t change the weather!” However, weather has a tremendous influence on wildlife populations, especially ground-nesting birds such as wild turkeys and bobwhite quail.
While they can’t change the weather, wildlife managers can look at weather patterns and predictions, and encourage landowners to manage habitat and landscapes accordingly. Some weather patterns are well known for producing over-abundant rain while others lean toward drought. Proactive habitat management gives young and old turkeys alike a better shot at survival.
Predators
Predators have been preying on wild turkeys for ages. The reproductive cycles of wild turkeys and other prey species have evolved to offset the loss to predators. In other words, game species have adapted to maintain and sometimes increase their populations even under heavy predation.
The NWTF has always encouraged the legal and ethical harvest of fur-bearing predators as part of a holistic wildlife management program, and it’s still a great idea now. However, far too often hunters accuse predators of being the “smoking gun” of population declines. In reality, only in the most extreme cases has that been found to be true. Proven habitat strategies will reduce predation on ground-nesting birds. This is where landowners and wildlife managers can make a dramatic difference.
Supplemental feeding
In many regions supplemental feeding has been used for decades, and it is gaining in popularity in others. Well-meaning individuals believe that if they supplement food for game species that those populations will be healthier — and remain in the area — in the coming year. While supplemental feeding may work in the short term, it is a strategy fraught with problems.
Concentrating wildlife on a feeding site oftentimes leads to increases in predation and exposure to diseased animals, and it disrupts normal seasonal movements in the population. It may also expose wildlife to toxins that grow on the food provided. For example, studies have shown high levels of aflatoxins on corn provided for deer and other wildlife. Aflatoxins are well-known reproduction inhibitors that can lead to birth defects and organ damage. Once again, providing better habitat for the year-round needs of wildlife, and not artificially feeding wildlife, is the preferred approach.
Disease
While wild turkeys can suffer from a variety of diseases, a few sick individuals do not negatively affect populations in most situations. Unlike white-tailed deer, sick turkeys generally succumb to disease relatively quickly and do not readily spread the disease to others. And fortunately, wildlife managers as well as hunters detect wild turkey diseases fairly soon after they strike. So far, no serious outbreaks of disease have been detected in the areas of the Southeast and Midwest where wild turkey population declines have been reported.
Disease can become much more of an issue anytime weather or human-influenced habitat factors artificially congregate wild turkeys.
Poaching
The illegal take of wild turkeys does indeed happen, but poaching has not occurred at a rate that would affect an overall population. Poaching (as well as predation, bad weather, disease or other negative factors) becomes an issue when populations are already low.
At times when wild turkeys need every adult for reproduction and population growth, the loss of just a few individuals can inhibit the population. As with disease, unchecked poaching can prevent a turkey population from rebounding as it would in more favorable conditions.
A change in agricultural and forestry practices
Forests and meadows throughout the afflicted regions, and especially in the Southeast, have matured and lost much of their value to wildlife. The shade of mature forests chokes out understory plants.
Changes in industrial and public forest management in the 1990s led to a decline in what we call “early successional” habitats, which is a biologist’s way of referring to new growth, or young forests. They are critical to nesting and brood habitat. New forests consist of lush ground cover with a ready supply of cover and insects for growing wild turkey poults, bobwhite quail and innumerable non-game species.
In addition, pastures, small fields and woods openings have also matured into impenetrable thickets of low-value hardwood sprouts. These habitats provide little to no nesting or brood rearing cover for wild turkeys.
What does the future hold?
The NWTF and our university and agency partners have led the way for more than 30 years as the foremost authorities on wild turkey research. Here is some of what we know about the issues at hand:
- Habitat that is managed to impede predator success is much more likely than predator control to provide long-term increases in wild turkey populations.
- Urban development, land management decisions that impact recreation, and current forestry management are creating habitat fragmentation, which may improve conditions for predators. Providing large, homogeneous blocks of nesting habitat and the proper use of prescribed fire reduces fragmentation, increases nesting success, and reduces the success of next predators.
- Grazing regimes that allow time for vegetative cover to mature, especially in larger pastures, increase nest and brood success.
- Improving habitat quality for turkeys by large-scale methods, such as prescribed fire and thinning of over-stocked stands, may promote the growth of seed-producing grasses and legumes, which are desirable for seed and insect production. There is evidence that increasing the hen’s nutritional plane increases productivity, perhaps increasing nest and re-nesting initiation rates, with the potential for correspondingly greater poult production.
Armed with this knowledge, we are moving forward with habitat improvement in the Southeast and Midwest. But research is needed to clarify details involving other critical issues, including:
- What are the preferred forest management techniques for upland species? These would include the most appropriate prescribed burning regime and block size, proper thinning techniques to maximize nesting and brood habitat, and determining the optimal size, shape and density of forested openings and edge habitats.
- How does supplemental feeding affect wild turkey populations? How does supplemental feeding affect predation, disease and decrease breeding proficiencies in wild turkeys?
- What habitat modeling techniques are needed to predict loss of critical wild turkey areas and help identify areas that need to be protected or improved to sustain core populations?
- The development of methods for identifying landscape-scale initiatives that will impact more habitat and attract more collaborative efforts with traditional and non-traditional partners.
So what are the NWTF and our partners doing about the declines in wild turkey populations?
We’ve partnered with state, federal and local agencies and other conservation organizations to create the North American Wild Turkey Management Plan. It calls for strategic planning, landscape-scale initiatives for brood habitat, increasing forest openings and opening understory across much of the affected regions. For instance, in Arkansas, the NWTF state chapter, NWTF regional biologist, and state and federal wildlife agencies have identified several key areas of importance that include the expanded and appropriate use of prescribed fire, the need for increased timber management on private and public lands and the expansion and establishment of mast-producing hardwood trees in areas where this habitat type is limited.
Ongoing and proactive habitat conservation provides the only holistic and long-term solution that will address all the issues affecting wild turkey populations. As we move forward we are faced with more challenges than ever. Restoring wild turkeys was a tremendous North American success story, but now the greatest challenge we face is the reality of sustaining these populations with sound habitat management and protection measures. These new challenges must be met head on with sound biological foundation, and we must carry the passion and commitment of our past efforts in this new direction. — James Earl Kennamer, Ph.D.