Huge Boost for Iowa Pheasants by Pheasants Forever and DNR

[Tom7227]

Plan would boost habitat

By Orlan Love

The Gazette

[email protected]

Kenny Snyder Carroll County

DES MOINES — Iowa Pheasants Forever has unveiled an ambitious plan to increase the state's pheasant and quail populations.

"Reload Iowa," the plan announced last Saturday at the group's annual meeting in Des Moines, seeks to establish and improve 1 million acres of wildlife habitat across the state.

The goal would be accomplished by hiring 50 wildlife habitat specialists — one for each two-county area in the state — to develop and deliver wildlife habitat plans for every landowner in Iowa.

"Our organization's name is truly our goal," said Steve Ries of rural Alburnett, a member of the grass roots leadership team that conceived the plan.

"We will change the landscape of Iowa," said team member Kenny Snyder of the group's Carroll County chapter.

Pheasants Forever believes individual attention from habitat specialists will encourage more landowners to take advantage of existing conservation programs.

"Our weakest link has always been marketing. We need people out there on farmers' doorsteps selling this thing," Snyder said.

A similar program in South Dakota, implemented in 2003 with just six habitat specialists, has upgraded or established wildlife habitat on more than 350,000 acres.

"South Dakota invented the wheel. We will copy it," Snyder said.

Changing agricultural practices during the past 50 years have eliminated much of the vegetation pheasants and quail need to flourish, said Tom Fuller, Pheasants Forever's Eastern Iowa regional representative. In the early 1970s, Iowa hunters harvested 1.9 million pheasants and 1.1 million quail, which compares with 632,000 pheasants and 54,000 quail last year, he said.

During the same time frame, the number of Iowa pheasant hunters declined from about 300,000 a year to 109,000 last year, Fuller said.

Iowa needs "a strategic plan to reverse those trends and bring back the glory days," he said.

Fuller said the three-year cost of the program is $11.5 million, which will be raised primarily by the organization's 105 Iowa chapters.

About $8.5 million will be allocated to pay the 50 wildlife habitat specialists, and a $3 million landowner stewardship fund will provide incentives for landowners to establish nesting and brood-rearing habitat, Fuller said.

"We want to make conservation easy and profitable for landowners," he said.

Another program goal will be to plant vegetation buffers along every stream in Iowa, yielding not only wildlife habitat but greatly improved water quality, Ries said.

"When you slow runoff with proper selection of habitat and wetlands, you will also reduce the frequency and severity of future flooding," he said.

Ries said he does not understand why government spends billions "reactively" to repair flood damage when it could "proactively" prevent much such damage, at much less cost, through the establishment of buffers, terraces and wetlands in the watersheds.

Todd Bogenschutz, who manages pheasants, quail and other upland game for the Department of Natural Resources, said the program will complement the efforts of the DNR's 10 existing private land biologists.

"It's an ambitious and necessary program that has the potential to make a significant impact," said outdoor writer and pheasant hunting expert Larry Brown of Radcliffe.

"I don't know if it can make Iowa into another South Dakota, but it will help," Brown said.

n Contact the writer: (319)-934-3172 or [email protected]