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Arizona Game And Fish To Improve Habitats Of Two Native Species

Mule deer and scaled quail are getting some help from the Arizona Game and Fish Department. The agency will spend a million dollars to improve their habitats. According to Game and Fish, both species are “below population objectives.”

Drought and fire suppression are two factors that have contributed to their declining numbers.

"We’ll go into some of those units that have been chosen and do some vegetation thinning," said April Howard with the Arizona Game and Fish Department. "So we’ll thin out trees and shrubs in those areas that have encroached in grasslands and then we’ll also conduct prescribed burns."

Howard said that once the treatments are completed in the specified areas, the new growth of shrubs and grasslands will become a food source for both species.

KJZZ senior field correspondent Kathy Ritchie has 20 years of experience reporting and writing stories for national and local media outlets — nearly a decade of it has been spent in public media.