Home Forums Birds & Dogs Upland Game Francolins in New Mexico

I heard a rumor back in the 1980's that Francolins were introduced to New Mexico but when I asked a game bird biologist he told me they had never been tried in the US. Then I ran across this article. Does anybody know if they still inhabit the area?


The francolins, very wild and shy birds, were trapped last year in India on a Monday and released in the arid southern areas of New Mexico four days later. Some have been held in the state bird farm for reproduction, but game men feel that one reason for the failure of the chukar program was that the birds became too tame at the farm to thrive on their own when they were released. New Mexico now has the gray francolin, and also a black variety that lives along the banks of irrigation ditches.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1074821/index.htm

They have been doing well on a bunch of HI Islands for a very long time... Last I checked that was part of the US...

Actually, the reading I have done on exotic gamebirds says chukars do very well everywhere as long is there is good cheat grass.

True! Us lower 48 always forget the other 2 and the other 2 want to secede.

Cheat Grass is the secret for Chukars. NM G&F released tens of thousands of Chukars and they didn't take which appears to be what happened to the Francolin. I guess New Mexico only gets 4 species of quail, the lesser prairie chicken(I'm not sure these can be hunted anymore), and the afghan pheasant. Though out of all of those I've only killed scaled and gambel's quail and I've only seen a few of those pheasants on the Bosque del Apache.

They tried to introduce Francolin in NV in the late 1950s. It wasn't a success. Our weather is too harsh. Some summers even the chuckar starve, and some winters they freeze to death. The Francolin need less peaks and spikes in conditions, I was told.

Interesting article DP4, Thanks for sharing it. It's like a snapshot in time as to the beliefs and attitudes in wildlife management 50 years or more ago. As for Francolins they probably just became a study in how to feed the native hawk species (the chuckers probably too).

If chuckers were $6.00/bird in 1963 AND the inflation calculator I used was correct...that would be $43.26/bird in today's money. Flushed, right down the crapper. But what I found interesting was a professor of Anthropology as chairman of the game commission directing the expenditures of money and release of exotics, while a professor of Biology from the same university (who I believe authored the original book Mammals of New Mexico) wasn't to hip on the idea. Then a former fish and game director spouts off about how great exotic rainbow trout are, when actually they are one of the factors that have decimated our native pure strain cutthroat populations.

Personally, I know nothing about chuckers, but if they indeed like cheatgrass..well there we have it.

LNF150, I'm glad you enjoyed the article. I grew up in NM and didn't really know the history of the exotics so I also found it interesting.

The politics involved in wildlife is amazing especially with exotics. I think most biologists quickly find out that their jobs are a lot more about surviving political warfare than managing and studying wildlife.

Even AK has "exotics" issues. Pike were introduced from North of the Alaska Range to the Susitna drainage some years back. They have taken over, wiped out salmon runs, and virtually eliminated native rainbows. ADF&G tried to manage them until this year...

Starting this year any pike caught in the area has to be killed if it is returned to the water...

ADF&G worked hard at introducing all kinds of game and furbearers around the state for a long time. Kodiak now has deer, elk, goats, bison, ptarmigan, ermine, marten, and fox that were all introduced. Even mink, muskrat and beaver were introduced on Kodiak along with red squirrels to feed the marten. There would have been more but pheasants did not take.