Community Corner

Quail Project Teaming with Wheelabrator to Bring Back Birds

The native bobwhite quail had nearly disappeared from South Jersey, but an effort is underway to repopulate the birds, starting at Wheelabrator's wildlife refuge.

The memory’s bright in Joe Matter’s mind: A bike ride down Crown Point Road, his shotgun balanced across the handlebars, bound for what was then a thumb of land beside the Eagle Point refinery.

Close to the Delaware, he knew he would find game birds and all kinds of wildlife–most notably bobwhite quail, which he loved not just because it was one of his favorite hunting targets.

“I don’t think God created anything greater than a bobwhite quail or a rainbow trout,” Matter said.

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But with unchecked predation, invasive plants and suburban sprawl, his beloved bobwhites disappeared from the area, following a nationwide trend. Audubon Society surveys showed that from 1967 to now, their numbers in the wild dropped by 80 percent.

“When I heard that, it was appalling, it was terrible,” Matter said. “I grew up with these birds–it’s a way of life.”

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So the New Jersey Quail Project, the group he helped found, starting pooling their resources to stand up for the bobwhite and work to restore its habitat, and hopefully, its population in South Jersey.

And the first site they thought of was that same spot along Crown Point Road, now home to the Wheelabrator waste-to-energy plant, as well as Wheelabrator’s wildlife refuge, the land where Matter once hunted in his youth.

Knowing the company’s reputation for environmental projects, the group pitched the idea of bringing bobwhites back, which would require much more than just importing some birds and letting them loose.

“Waste Management and Wheelabrator stepped up to the plate with this one,” Matter said.

He called the needed work a monumental task, with the first step the need to clear thirty acres of invasive phragmites, a wetland reed, to restore the bobwhite’s habitat, but Wheelabrator plant manager Mike Kissel and his team were up to the task.

“These quail were here before we were here, so it’s good to bring them back,” Kissel said. “This is their home.”

With the clearing underway, Matter and his group bought an incubator and 100 day-old quail chicks, which were set in place in Wheelabrator’s wildlife refuge a few weeks ago.

A mile down a rutted path, not far from the Delaware River and views of the Navy Yard and the Philadelphia skyline, the birds huddled together in their incubator, tucked back in a tangle of brush and trees.

As cicadas chittered in the trees and a red-bellied passenger jet rumbled overhead, Kissel pulled open the roof of their refuge to reveal a clump of bobwhites in one corner.

“They’re getting pretty big,” he remarked, having watched them double in size over about a week and a half.

The bobwhites are due to be released soon, Matter said, with the aim to create a breeding population the Quail Project can use to re-establish the birds throughout South Jersey.

Kissel said Wheelabrator’s on board with the idea, as environmental stewardship–something on which the company works with West Deptford Middle School every year–is one of the company’s top priorities.

“We’ll just keep raising birds, and hopefully repopulate them,” he said.

Matter said it’s not just bobwhites that will benefit from the work out at Wheelabrator, noting that other birds–the meadowlark, ringed-neck pheasant and woodcock, among many–share the bobwhite’s habitat and could experience a similar resurgence.

But Matter’s priority is to see the bobwhite’s return, so his children and grandchildren can see the birds out in the wild.

“We just want to get things back, get them back in balance,” he said. “They deserve nothing less than our best effort–this is their planet, we’re just passing through.”


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