Hoping to save pheasants in Utah County, residents have formed a conservation group.

A group of 15 game bird enthusiasts have formed a Utah County chapter of Pheasants Forever, a national organization that works to preserve habitat for pheasant, quail and other upland game birds.

"Pheasant populations today are down drastically from the past," said Scott Root of the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. "Development has hurt us, and loss of habitat. We are trying to help the pheasants the best we can."

But help can be hard to come by, he said. DWR officials used to do a pheasant count each year, traveling a fixed route to count the birds, but as development encroached, the route had to be abandoned.

Now no population counts are done.

State-run pheasant and quail farms, one of which was located in Springville, had to be closed in 1993 because of expense, he said. Now the state uses fee money from hunters to buy pheasants from private farms and stock the birds in state hunting grounds each year just before the hunt.

At its zenith, hunters took 300,000 pheasants in Utah in the late 1960s, said Cade Powell, a biologist with the national organization of Pheasants Forever. "Now the harvest is down to 20,000 to 30,000 birds."

Organizers of the new Utah County chapter of Pheasants Forever hope to reverse that trend, said Jeremey King, chapter president.

"I have grown up hunting here in Utah County," he said. "Lately I have been noticing there are not a lot of birds around."

"Our number one focus will be the youth," he said. "The number of youth hunters has really decreased from what I remember, so we are trying to get the youth involved and excited about the outdoors and habitat conservation."

Michelle Feichko of Taylorsville said she joined the chapter even though she doesn't live here because she grew up in Utah County and believes "that is where there is the greatest prospect of bringing habitat back."

"Pheasants Forever is a conservation group," she said. "We figure if we have better habitat, it means better cover to lay eggs or keep chicks in, and the pheasant population will come back."

Quail too are in short supply in Utah County, she said.

"The population growth here is outrageous," she said. "In order to preserve our pheasants, we need to work together as a community. ... I want my kids and grandkids to be able to hunt pheasants."

Pheasants and quail may need protection now more than ever, said Leslie McFarlane, avian flu specialist with the DWR.

Though there has never been a documented case of pheasant or quail contracting avian flu, "it is something we would be worried about at this point," she said, noting that no one will know how susceptible the birds are until the disease arrives in the United States Some experts have said that could happen within weeks.

Pheasants Forever chapters keep 100 percent of money raised for local projects, sending no money to the national organization, Powell said.

Since its creation in 1982, Pheasants Forever has spent $195 million on 300,000 habitat projects, benefiting 4 million acres nationwide.