Posted on Sun, May. 07
DNR's duck habitat plan a mere pipedream
CHRIS NISKANEN
One of the most sobering trips a Minnesotan can make this time of year is to North Dakota.
Going west, you cross through Minnesota's prairie pothole region — supposedly the state's most fertile breeding ground for waterfowl — and see few ducks. When you reach North Dakota, the number of wetlands increases and so do the ducks.
Get about 60 miles into North Dakota and virtually every speck of water holds a duck — pintails, mallards, bluebills, you name it.
Turn around and drive back to Minnesota (I made the round trip last week), and the contrast between the states is stark. Even on a federal Waterfowl Production Area in Minnesota, I spotted only a handful of ducks lollygagging in the marsh.
Now, turn the clock ahead 50 years, and Minnesota will look more like North Dakota, or at least it should have dramatically more habitat than it has now.
That's the vision laid out in the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources' "Long Range Duck Recovery Plan, " which was officially re-leased last week.
The plan, eagerly awaited by duck hunters, was reworked in past months by DNR biologists. It has been more than a year in the works.
The plan's bold "vision" is to raise the state's duck-breeding population from an average of 630,000 to 1 million; to restore 2 million acres of habitat, mostly in southern and western Minnesota; and to increase the number of duck hunters from 100,000 to 140,000.
They are all laudable goals, but the DNR's plan fails to answer the most fundamental question: How are those goals realized?
Four months ago, I raised the same issue with the DNR and pleaded with biologists to put more meat on the plan. And they have, providing an annual budget for the project ($64 million) and some specific targeted projects over the next two years.
But the document still fails to address how the DNR plans to lead the charge in preserving and protecting 2 million acres of additional wildlife habitat costing $64 million.
It's a pretty glaring omission, and duck hunters should continue to demand answers.
Let's see: The DNR's entire budget for the Division of Fish and Wildlife is $80 million. About two-thirds of that, $53 million, comes from the sale of hunting and fishing licenses.
That means the DNR could devote the proceeds of every single hunting and fishing license sold in the state to the duck plan and still not fully fund it.
Granted, the DNR's plan assumes funding will come from a wide range of other players: private conservation groups like Ducks Unlimited and Pheasants Forever, from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and from a wide variety of federal programs tied to the Farm Bill.
But the plan assumes the Farm Bill will have habitat-friendly provisions and there will be other money coming from other sources.
Moreover, the DNR has no plan, little staff and little inclination to try to influence the outcome of the 2007 federal farm bill, the biggest opportunity to help or destroy Minnesota's wildlife dreams.
The duck plan is really a duck pipedream. Its goals are stretched out to 50 years. It assumes we won't lose any additional habitat. It assumes the DNR will be the lead agency with the plan, but it doesn't say how the DNR will lead.
It remains bold in vision but brazenly empty of new strategies or ideas for fulfilling its goal.
It comes up short in many ways.
The vast majority of Minnesota's future wildlife habitat will be located on private land — on farmers' lands. The duck plan says little about how the DNR hopes to influence private-land conservation, how it will work with farmers to encourage conservation measures or how it hopes to reverse its negative image in rural Minnesota, particularly with farmers. Nor does the plan offer any ideas on how the DNR can promote a better land ethic or boldly improve its delivery of conservation programs to rural Minnesota.
Right now, if you call the DNR and ask for assistance in developing a wildlife habitat on your land, it might take months for a biologist to show up, if one shows up at all. Ask anyone who has undertaken such a project on their land, and most will say they did it on their own, maybe with some assistance from Ducks Unlimited or Pheasants Forever.
DNR wildlife managers barely have the time or resources to take care of DNR lands, much less offer time and advice to others about their land. This is no fault of individual biologists — they've been strapped by too little money.
To the DNR's credit, it's trying to address some of the above problems. It has a new Working Lands Initiative, where local teams of biologists, farm and government agencies and landowners come up with conservation projects and strategies. It's a good idea, if a little late in coming.
But as written, the duck plan is nothing more than a nice dream. I await the DNR's specific plans to make it a reality, because what we're doing now isn't working.
Chris Niskanen can be reached at cniskanen@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5524.
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