Passing by the Bridgestone Centennial Wilderness Area on Eastland Road there laid a dead coyote in the middle of the road. The T.W.R.A. has recently attempted to introduce quail in the W.M.A., and is failing miserably to accomplish this.
The agency has recently tried to convince the Bridgestone Corporation and the local public that all that is needed is more open lands in the W.M.A. to be successful. The agency has proposed a massive “clear cutting” operation to do this that has been met with staunch opposition from T.D.O.C. and the local public. The fact is that The T.W.R.A. is simply either poorly educated about wildlife or just stubbornly ignorant. The agency is failing to introduce the Quail for one simple reason -the rampant coyote population in the area. Unless and until these predator numbers are either eradicated or severely checked, no terrestrial bird can be introduced successfully.
In fact the statistics show that the terrestrial bird populations are near extinction levels now in the Bridgestone Centennial Wilderness Area. Gone are the Ruffed Grouse and Ring Neck Pheasants. Wild Turkeys are disappearing rapidly, and very few of the 1200 Quail released only a couple years ago remain. The T.W.R.A. doesn’t need to clear or obtain lands as the agency would have everyone believe. They simply need to adequately manage the lands that they’ve been assigned to manage.
Just a couple weeks ago Tennessee Tech released a dozen Quail with identifying marks to track them, overnight nine birds were gone. It’s foolish to just keep feeding these Coyotes, and why T.W.R.A. is failing to rid us of this non-indigenous predator, or recognize the problem for what it is I simply can’t understand.
They had no problem eradicating the wild pigs in The W.M.A. with over a hundred killed and just bulldozed into a trench about four or five years ago, which, by the way is a felony crime in some states called ‘wanton waste’.