In this episode of NDO Podcast, we’re at Audubon Wildlife Management Area visiting with Dan Halstead, wildlife resource management supervisor, about a recent wetland development project here, the uniqueness of Mallard Island, and challenges that lie ahead for the next generation of wildlife habitat managers.
Cayla: Welcome to episode 105 of the NDO podcast. On today's episode, we're out in the field again on some tailgates by Audubon WMA. So this is district five Wildlife Resource District with Dan Halstead the resource management supervisor. Yeah. Just talking about this WMA, all the WMAs in his district. It's been nice to do these field episodes instead of in the studio but fall and winter are coming. So yeah, it's short lived.
Casey: We'll get froze out.
Cayla: Yeah, yeah. So yeah, thanks for being on Dan.
Dan: You bet.
Cayla: Yeah. If you just want to start with how you landed here with the department.
Dan: Sure.
Cayla: Lengthy award-winning career with us.
Dan: I that's a, yeah, a good place to start. I've been in North Dakota about 28 years. I actually started out my career in Nebraska where I actually had several different jobs. But out of college, I was a warden for several years. And then I did private lands biologist works. And then I eventually become more or less the assistant biologist type level on WMA work like we have here, and I worked there for ten years and got the opportunity to come to North Dakota. Just was kind of at the point in my career where I wanted to do something different and try something different. And it was difficult, but I got my wife finally talked into moving.
Cayla: So you're originally from Nebraska?
Dan: Well, I hate to admit this, but I'm an Iowegian by birth.
Cayla: Okay.
Dan: But I grew up in Nebraska.
Cayla: Okay.
Dan: Yeah. I think we moved to Nebraska when I was in seventh grade from Indiana, actually, and thought we'd died and went to heaven with the hunting and fishing things that we had there. And I grew up in a smaller town on the eastern edge of Nebraska. Went to college at University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Started out as an animal science major because I grew up on a farm raising hogs, purebred hogs and made the choice one day to go to a Wildlife Society meeting, a student chapter one at Lincoln, and pretty much just hooked after that. So and even that's where I met my wife. She was a fisheries major. So yeah, so got really interested in that. I did finish my animal science degree because I was quite a ways into it when I decided to add wildlife as a major. So I did both. And then I got the opportunity to take a bunch of graduate classes in range management too, when I was working in Lincoln. So I had a really diverse background, I guess, and learned, learned a lot, you know, in college learned a lot about the habitat stuff when I got into the range end the things, you know, and how to, how to plant grasses and alfalfa and manage all that stuff and use cattle for grazing and those kind of things. So it's it really kind of has worked out really well for me to have that background.
Casey: So yeah, that's one thing I talk about with new students who want to get into this field. It's like, well, think about where you may want to end up because range management in the prairie is one of the, you know, one of the things you can help set yourself apart from other people,
Dan: Right?
Casey: Because you can go to all the wildlife classes and all the wildlife management classes, but you're going to get a little different fire management, grazing management, and some of that stuff and some of those range management opportunities.
Dan: Right. My, my professor there at Lincoln was big in prescribed burning. And I also took a class from Kansas State that was very involved in burning. And so yeah, that's something we do a lot and want to do more of. And so, any background you can get in that is really good.
Casey: Yeah. We were just talking on one of these pieces that were on. There's a lot of big bluestem coming, and we didn't necessarily plant that in the last few years, but you did a prescribed burn on it.
Dan: Yep.
Casey: And then all of a sudden it expresses itself. It's in the seed bank sitting there.
Dan: Exactly. Yeah. A lot of these plantings that we just looked at are probably 20 years old, you know, and there was big, big bluestem in there at the time, but it had been kind of taken over by Brome and Kentucky bluegrass and things. And then timing of burning and grazing can kind of make that stuff come back to some degree at least. You know, we have a lot of one of the things we're doing here is we have a lot of grass plantings that got planted. Oh, in the first probably five years I was here. And just prior to that, we had done a big expanse of grass planting and that stuff. After about 20 years, it's time to replace it, you know. And so, we're really involved in that a lot now is trying to replant our grass plantings. So we're, we're averaging somewhere in the between two, 300 acres a year that we're redoing. To new grass because it's just, it's just ran its...
Cayla: Did you hear that pheasant?
Dan: It's just ran its lifespan, you know.
Casey: Well, I think there's some things we could do to make them last longer, but our hands are tied in some sort of ways, because the goal we have is to produce wildlife and huntable areas for the public. So you could probably do some more grazing types of things to keep that grass more stable on the landscape, those natives. But it gets tough when you have those two opportunities that you have to have to maintain maximum huntability and wildlife production.
Dan: Exactly. We've always tried to err on the side of doing things in the spring and early summer, so that by fall you had some vegetation back for hunting cover. And you're exactly right. One of the things you could do is probably do some grazing in the fall and put pressure on the cool season, invasive grasses that are growing then. But we have just always tried to avoid doing that. And having cows out there in the fall when you have hunters trying to use the area. So that was.
Casey: And rightfully so. I mean, that's.
Dan: Yeah.
Casey: That's what we're here for. So that's what we got to do.
Dan: Right. A lot of the stuff we're doing, high intensity, short duration grazing. I can show you places like on Painted Woods, for example, where if you go out there in the fall, we grazed it really hard early on with a lot of cows for a week or ten days, and you go back there in the fall and you, you won't even be able to tell that we had cattle out there.
Casey: Sometimes it even looks better.
Dan: Yeah.
Casey: Than the stuff that you didn't graze at all.
Dan: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. It sort of rejuvenates the grass and gets it to come back. And if you have normal precipitation in the summer, it'll look super good by fall. There you can run into times when we're in a real drought, and maybe it won't come back quite as good as you'd like, but typically it does and it looks really good.
Casey: Especially those natives. Yep. Those natives that their taproots and stuff, you can they get to some water resources that a lot of the other grasses don't.
Dan: Exactly. There's the wooded portion of Painted Woods WMA we started grazing probably ten years ago and prior to that you wouldn't have never even known there was a native grasses in there. It was just all brome. Now after grazing it for real, basically that short duration, high intensity stuff. Now there's Big Bluestem all over the place. It's like we didn't even know we had that, you know? Yeah. And so it's done some benefits to increasing the native species, making them express themselves. And that seed had to be laying there for many, many, many years, you know.
Cayla: I was gonna say, since we were on Painted Woods, we could just talk about that WMA, recent acquisition on it.
Dan: Sure. Yeah, we've been really fortunate. I would say Painted Woods is one of those kind of unique WMAs where some things have just kind of came together on it. The original WMA was like 590 acres of land along Painted Woods Lake that originally the Bureau of Reclamation had it and Fish and Wildlife Service works with them on that. And then they lease that area to us. So it's pretty much considered, it's been transferred to Fish and Wildlife Service. And so, they're the owner. We're the managing partner on that. And then over the last number of years, we've had two acquisitions adjacent to that area. On the other side of basically on the south side of the lake or the east side of the lake. And both of those were kind of brought about by the county, McLean County, wanting to do some flood control work on, on that area, because it's got a long history of flooding and Painted Woods Creek flooding and covering up a lot of the agricultural land along there in the spring and things so. The county actually worked with us and American Foundation for Wildlife and the Trust and everybody to acquire two pieces along there. They were several years apart and happening but, so now the total WMA acreage is over a thousand acres. So it's a really, really neat piece there.
Dan: And we've, so the, the county was able to do their phase one project on the first piece that was purchased of their flood control work. And they're working on getting the second phase done here shortly in the next year or two. And so, they've been able to kind of meet their goals of getting some flood control work put in. They're also providing some recreation for people on the WMA there. You know, we worked with them to put a canoe access in. So people right off the highway have a place to launch canoes and kayaks and things like that for recreation and for duck hunting and those kind of things. And we've also planted, you know, over 100 acres of new grass plantings down there in the last couple of years. So it's really turning into a really cool wildlife area and spectacular in the spring. The amount of waterfowl using it and, you know, has whitetail deer, turkeys, a lot of pheasants, Canada geese, you know, just, just really a cool area. You know, so and been a been really fun to work with. And it's cool when you have these outside groups like the counties and the partners in Pheasants Forever and Turkey Federation and Delta Waterfowl and all these folks contributing to make this happen, you might say. So it's been a really good partnership type.
Casey: We even had a unique opportunity with DOT right there. They had people remember the old rest area south of Washburn on 83. So DOT owned that area and that turned into a nice little parking spot to access it from right from that side. And that's where the kayak/canoe access is. And so yeah, exactly. It was a lot of partners. I remember working on the project of those acquisitions. It gets to be kind of like herding cats and a lot of phone calls and a lot of touching bases and keeping things moving. But.
Dan: Right, right.
Casey: But fun projects to work on.
Dan: Very, very good, very cool project.
Casey: So we added a few wetlands in that project with DU think.
Dan: Right. When they were doing their flood control project, we worked some wetlands into being built adjacent to that flood control channel. So they included that. We've also been developing small wetlands using our funding that we get through Fish and Wildlife Service for that area for the original part. So we, we've actually built five small wetlands on the original WMA, and then we built another five on the, one of the new portions, the newer, the older one of the new two. So yeah. Yeah, so we've been doing a lot of work.
Casey: Yeah. And also developed fishing pond. Up on top.
Dan: Yeah. That was part of that first acquisition was to, I think we worked with fisheries division to excavate out, make that pond deeper. And they’ve been doing some annual stocking of fish in there for kind of for a kid’s fishing pond and that kind of stuff.
Casey: Yep.
Dan: So yeah.
Casey: Kind of those community fishing ponds. It's close to Washburn, close to not that far from Bismarck.
Dan: Wilton too close to Wilton. Yeah. So yeah, that's a really neat area. So.
Casey: Yeah. And Cayla and I are going to go look at that one on the way back.
Dan: There you go.
Casey: So maybe talk a little bit about you've got a lot of WMAs along the lakes.
Dan: Right?
Casey: Audubon. We're sitting on.
Dan: Yep.
Casey: And we work with Corps of Engineers on all those. Maybe describe that process.
Dan: Okay. Yeah, we manage multiple WMAs along the lake that are owned by the Corps of Engineers and leased to the Game and Fish Department. In fact, if you count the Williston District too, we manage just approximately 54,000 acres of corps land along Lake Sakakawea between our two districts. So yeah, we're like, we would be by far the biggest leasee of corps land that they have to work with, you know, and...
Casey: And some, some of that is because they needed to zone it as wildlife.
Dan: Correct.
Casey: In their plan. So whether we leased it and managed it or not, there would have to be some sort of wildlife benefits.
Dan: Yes.
Casey: Based on when the dam was built.
Dan: Right. There's a master plan for Lake Sakakawea and everything that was zoned wildlife has to be managed for wildlife habitat. And that's what we do is manage a lot of that stuff that's zoned wildlife. There's, there's a little bit that the Corps manages here or there that they do themselves, but the vast majority would be stuff that Game and Fish manages. One of the things we have to do with the Corps is turn in a management plan of what we're going to do in the coming year. And they go through and do a lot of approvals. You know, they have to look at are we going to impact any cultural things? And if so, then we have to basically figure out how to avoid some of that stuff. And you know, they look at are we going to affect terns and plovers on the lake, T and E stuff. And so, they'll give us, you know, they might tell us, hey, you know, if you're going to burn this piece here that's next to the shoreline, you need to let us know a week ahead and we'll go out and check and see if there's anything nesting there. And we may have to not do it if that's the case, you know. And so, there's a there's a whole bunch of things that they have to look at from their end. So we turn in this annual management plan that also basically it tells them what we did last year and what we got accomplished and what we're planning on doing in the next year or two. And we so we work with them on that. It's a, it's a big process. The Corps, they're super good partners with us. They got a lot of good people working there. They do have quite the federal bureaucracy that they have to go through, you know, so it, it's something you have to just work with, and I don't think those guys like it any more than we do. But there's a lot of hoops you gotta jump through, you know. And so, they've been really good to help us out and work on that and try to get us through that stuff. And, you know, and there's times that we might have to say, nope, we can't do that because there's some kind of site out there or something, you know, and so we have to work around some of that stuff.
Casey: One of the unique things is, is their office, who we mainly work with is right in Riverdale, right. Which is a block and a half from our office. So we know all those folks really well and it makes for a good working relationship.
Dan: It does. And, and we're neighbors, you might say, you know, so and, and we're managing lots of their land for them. So we work closely together and try to do the best we can and, you know, get things accomplished.
Casey: And so maybe since we're on those topics, that's it, you know, some unique ones, Mallard Island.
Cayla: Should have done a tour there. I've never been there.
Casey: Yeah, yeah. A lot of people know what Mallard Island is, especially maybe pheasant hunters, but.
Dan: Well, one, one of your questions on the list here was unique WMAs. And that was going to be my main probably example was Mallard Island is a 2,500-acre island in, in Lake Sakakawea. So it's really unique in that we have to have equipment out there. We farm about 250 acres of crops out there for, for wildlife, food plots. And it's a challenge you might say we have we have to have our own line of equipment out there. We have a Quonset and a metal building that we keep stuff in, but we have tractors and planters and discs and all that kind of stuff out there. If we have a breakdown, we have to either haul the technician out there in our boat or wait till winter and try to get something off. And if we have something major that we have to take it in, we have to wait till winter and then come across the ice with it. And I can tell you that I have some guys that are have more you know, I guess gumption than I do or are braver. Yeah.
Cayla: Braver than Casey. You're a chicken on the ice.
Casey: I hate driving on ice.
Dan: They're braver than I am.
Casey: I've ridden with Arv on the ice too many times. I hate riding on it.
Dan: Yeah. So I'll give them credit because I asked Robert Miller one time, what do you do when you hear the ice cracking and you're driving the tractor across? He said, turn the radio up. I'm like, oh man, it's not for me. But yeah, I'll give him credit because they, they're brave. But yeah, so it's really unique. Some of the interesting things is we've run into people from other states like Illinois and Indiana and whatever out there hunting. And it's like.
Cayla: Yeah, how do they learn about that?
Dan: How do you learn about this? And then I, I've ran into people that the day, the first day you could possibly walk across the ice, they're out there going across. And I'm like, well, how in Illinois did you know that this was the day you could get across? And they're like, oh, we got a buddy in Garrison. He let us know. So yeah, so there's people that it's a destination to, they come from, there's a, there's guys from Alaska that I see out there. And it's, it's just, you know, it's a destination place to go hunting.
Cayla: Yeah, mainly pheasant hunting?
Casey: Yeah. A lot of it is.
Dan: Pheasant hunting and there's a lot of archery, deer hunting interest and rifle deer too. But particularly it seems like we.
Cayla: Should transplant some turkeys out there.
Dan: I've been trying to do that for 25 years.
Cayla: That'd be so fun.
Dan: Actually, there has been a few turkeys out there that showed up out there, and they didn't stay. Oh. So it's probably. I think there's probably too much pressure. Yeah. Pheasant hunting wise when I, I should mention that when I first moved here, Mallard Island was the place to go pheasant hunting. And there would be 40 to 50 boat trailers at the Wolf Creek ramp. Wow. Plus ones over on the north side and on the east end. So there was probably, you know, easily 60 boat trailers all around the lake that were hunting out there. And you would get out there and there would be just people lined up everywhere. I mean, everywhere you look, there was people. It was crazy. Not the safest thing in the world to be doing. But interestingly, you know, over my career here, we saw three, 3 million acres of CRP go in and over the years, as there was more habitat on the mainland, the pressure got to be a lot less. I mean, it was still plenty, but it was back to the safer mode, you know.
Casey: Yeah. And it's mean, it's much easier to drive your pickup up to a field and walk to than get everything ready in the boat and right. Throw dogs in the boat.
Dan: And, and the, and the guys that have been around here a long time will tell you that years ago, prior to me being here, it was a one pheasant limit out there.
Casey: Yeah. It had its own.
Dan: Yeah. It had its own limit and it was one.
Cayla: Wow. That's a lot of work.
Dan: Can you imagine the work it was to get out there and get one pheasant. So. But that got changed eventually to match the rest of the state for limit. And for a while there it was really, really crowded. And then as the mainline got better, it, it got more realistic, I guess you'd say. I mean, opening day, there'll still be a lot of people out there, but it gets to be a lot more reasonable nowadays, you know, when you go out there. So.
Casey: So I got to tell a little hunting story on I won't use names but went out. So my brother who lives in Iowa, brought some guys up and the one was a big pheasant hunter, and he'd heard about Mallard Island. He wanted to go pheasant on Mallard Island, and I'd done it 1 or 2 times, but I was like, all right, we'll take you to Mallard Island. And it's 2,500 acres. So it's not a small piece of property that you get on. We walked around for 4.5 hours, and this guy is a little bit out of shape. We hadn't seen water since we left the boat. And he looked at me and he said, I thought you said this was an island. I said, it is, but we've got a ways to go yet. This isn't an island, this is a continent, I don't know if I'm going to make it, but we did shoot our limit of pheasants. But in his mind, he was going to go on this island and there's going to be like fish in a barrel, pheasants, you know and then we ended up walking around for four or 4.5 hours.
Dan: Yeah. That's one thing I tell people when they're going out there is it's four and a half miles long. You have to realize that you have to get back, right? So you have.
Casey: Nobody's driving around in the pickup to pick you up.
Dan: No, you have to pace yourself that you have enough left in you to get back to the truck or back to the boat after you go out there. The other thing, I'll give you a lesson on what not to do is one day I decided to take steel shot with me, and maybe I'd get a chance to shoot a goose. So yeah, I'm walking down the shoreline with three roosters in my bag. And here comes two geese. And so, I shoot one, put it in my backpack thing. And when I got back to the truck, it's like, I'll never do that again.
Casey: That extra 8-pound goose was more.
Dan: Yeah, yeah. It's like, oh man. Yeah. 8-pound goose or probably is more like a 12-pound goose.
Casey: By the time you got back for sure.
Dan: But you throw that in there with three pheasants. It's like, why did I do that?
Casey: So yeah, yeah, it's an adventure. I mean, you get you can easily spend all day out there.
Dan: Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. You want to take water and take a snack along whatever and enjoy it while you're out there. And but yeah, kind of pace yourself. So.
Casey: So maybe you've got a wetland project on Mallard too.
Dan: Yeah.
Casey: Maybe touch on that while we're on Mallard Island.
Dan: Okay. Yeah. Many years ago.
Casey: Dan's the wetland builder. That's gonna be his nickname.
Dan: That was one of my first projects when I came to North Dakota was we I, you know, learned about Mallard Island. And the guys talked about all the pumping wetlands they did out there and all that. And even at that point, everybody was getting a little bit older and not very crazy about carrying pipes around and doing all that work they used to do when they were younger.
Casey: Yeah, they were really happy when I was carrying it around.
Dan: Yeah. And Yeah, exactly. And I mean, it was just physically tough, you know? And so, we had all these wetlands on Mallard Island and it's like, well, we need to figure out a way to pump water into those without having to do it the old-fashioned way of carrying irrigation pipe and all that. So I got together with DU and Fish and Wildlife Service and different partners, and we came up with a plan to put a pump in Lake Sakakawea and pump water with underground pipes to all these wetlands. And then all we really had to do was get water to the top of the island, the highest point in the middle. And then we could gravity flow it all the way to the northeast corner. So we actually move water like a mile and a half across the island, all the way, all the way basically across Mallard Island and to some wetlands in the northeast corner and wetlands all the way along the way. So we've been running that we installed it when the water level in that 2004-6 range, where the water level in Sakakawea was really low and we were able to, we were going to do it in a couple phases. And then we ended up hitting this almost record low water levels in the lake to where we were driving out to Mallard Island. And so, what that did was save a lot of money in cost of building the project. And so, we went from phase one to just doing the whole entire project, because we could save enough money by driving out there and drive equipment out there. We didn't have to try to float equipment out on a barge and then we were going to have to do a coffer dam in the bay that we were putting the inlet in. Well, it was dry, so we were able to put the pump in because it's basically more or less a well, in the bottom of the lake is what it is. And it's a submersible, well, just like you would have at your house or whatever. And so...
Casey: A few more gallons per minute probably.
Dan: Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Bigger, Bigger, but the same design and actually not real big. It's, it's like, if I remember correctly, like 600 gallons a minute. So not huge, but you know, irrigation pipe and ran around and stuff and then yeah. And then we had to run electric electricity out there. So McLean Electric ran a line, actually a line, it's laying on the bottom of the lake going out there from about the fish cleaning station at Wolf Creek across the lake, over to the other side, and then we had to jump it up to three phase from there. So yeah, so that was a really cool project. In the beginning, we had thought about some kind of wind energy to run that pump, and then we went back one more time to get electrical prices for running the power line across. And it ended up being less than we expected, I guess less than they were predicting. And so, that ended up being the logical way to do it. It was the cheapest way to do it. And so yeah, so we have power out there and electric pump that sits in the bottom of the lake and a casing just, it basically is similar to a vertical well you might have at your farmstead, but it is more horizontal, I guess you'd say runs at an angle down into the lake and so it is a challenge. We've had to replace that pump a couple times over the years, and it's a little bit of a challenge to pull it out of there because it's A) you can't get anybody out there to help you usually, you know, so and it's not coming straight up like a lot of wells at a farm place or something. So it's a different process. Got to pull it out with a tractor and a loader and keep it up in the airways and whatever. But we've learned how to do it. And you know, those pumps do wear out eventually. And we got a lot of mileage out of the very first pump. So but yeah, so we pumped those wetlands for duck production in the spring primarily, you know, and there's usually some hunting opportunities in the fall and some of the wetlands too. So. That'll be, you know, if I don't know, a fair amount of ducks out there in the fall, not it's not huge amount, but, but a fair amount. So and then we also, I should mention we grow those 200 to 250 acres of crops out there. None of those are harvested. They're all outstanding for the wildlife to use and provide.
Casey: Mostly because you won't let Robert have a combine out there.
Dan: That's right. And yeah. And pretty, you know, they're beneficial to the hunting. I mean, we're big believers in having some food plots on our WMAs. If nothing else, to attract wildlife to stay on the WMA to provide hunting opportunities, you know.
Casey: Yeah. So we're sitting on switch over to another project. So we're sitting on Audubon. We just looked this morning at this wetland project. I remember you had told me about eight years ago you wanted to do wetland project out here, and I got to be the wildlife chief. And all of a sudden, the Fish and Wildlife Service called me and said, hey, we've got over $1 million that you guys can use on your WMAs. That's where it's supposed to go. Yeah, I was like, well, I got a project. Let me give Dan a call, how Big do you want to make this? Yeah.
Dan: Yeah, we were really fortunate. You know, how it got started too, was we got the message from Bismarck that, hey, we're going to have probably some extra federal aid money coming up. It was when the Biden administration was in there and people were all buying guns like crazy, you know, and going, oh, we, we maybe should buy guns now in case something changes with the laws. And, and so we were anticipating having an influx of federal aid dollars. And I know we got that message from Bismarck. And Robert and I were talking one day and it's like, well, you know, we've always wanted to figure out how could we get back into pumping at Audubon and get these wetlands full of, you know, full of ducks and geese again. And this would be our opportunity maybe, you know, and the guys did the same thing. They used to pump these all by hand and drag hose around and drag pipe around and all this. And it's like we got to make this so you can flip a few buttons and pump water.
Cayla: It's that simple, huh?
Dan: Yeah.
Casey: As far as you know.
Dan: Yeah, as far as you know. Yeah. So I mean, there's a few valves to turn, but I mean compared to the way it was, it's so much better, you know. So, so anyway, that's how it kind of first started. And then as you mentioned, the timing was just perfect that Fish and Wildlife had put in for this grant. It was an IRA grant they called it. And yeah, so they're like, we need to do wetland enhancement work adjacent to our refuges. And so, this would be the perfect fit. And I'm like, we got you covered, you know, planned out. Yeah, it's here you go. And so, I think they were really excited to be a partner on this and have that grant money available. And so, we went to work and DU did all the engineering design work on this and oversaw the construction. And some of that, we did not end up using all of their grant. Part of it is being used on the project on Oahe bottoms now.
Casey: Yep. McLean Bottoms.
Dan: McLean Bottoms yeah. And so, some of it's being used there and then DU they made up the difference basically. So we had as far as funding for this project, we had Fish and Wildlife Service with their grant. DU put some money into it AFW put some money into it. Marathon Petroleum put some money into it. And then, of course, North Dakota Game and Fish. Our part, we paid for some of the up-front engineering to get the project started. And then pretty much all the rest of the funding came from these other ones I've mentioned. So really nice cooperative project. You know, the main purpose of this is to provide habitat for nesting ducks and brood rearing, you know, so as you can see around here, like we're haying some of this off and we're going to be redoing some of the grass plantings right in the vicinity of this project. So, our goal is to have wetlands with water adjacent to super good nesting habitat. And you know, Audubon's already a pretty good duck area. But these wetlands here, a lot of them, when you're not in a fairly wet cycle, don't have water in them. They were a lot of them were built with dikes and things back 50 years ago. And they depended on pumping to have water, like when we started pumping here this year. There was only a couple of these wetlands had water in them. Out of ten. There are basically ten wetlands and only a couple of them had water and not very much water. They're pretty good pheasant habitat, you know, at times a lot of cattails in them, but just not much open water. So that's going to be one of our challenges is to get ahead of the cattails a little bit, you know, because some of them are pretty cattail choked. And if we can't put enough water in there to choke out some of the cattails, we may have to do some management stuff in the future. So, but yeah, it's really a cool project. Some good partners happen to be right next, we're only probably a mile and a half from the Audubon National Wildlife Refuge right here. And so, it worked out perfectly for what they were looking for, for a partner. So yeah, really good, really good project.
Casey: So what you said there's ten wetlands and can we can we drain these wetlands out of this system, or do they have to naturally dry?
Dan: Yeah, they're pretty much they're pretty much all would have to naturally dry. Which I don't think is going to be much of a problem because they, they've been doing that, you know. Yep. The, the only thing would be that some of them were going to have to flow through them. And so, they're going to have some water in them. Even if we leave all the boards out of our structures, we have to flow through it to get to the next one. Yep. So they'll have a little water in them, but they also have the potential if we put boards in to have five more foot of water, you know. One of the things that happened in the design of this project was we had basically a phase one and a phase two, and phase two would have been running individual pipes to every wetland so that they could have all be managed separately. And that basically was just cost prohibitive. We didn't have enough funding to do that. But that was, you know, the grandiose plan would have been instead of flowing through some of these to get to the next one, we would have ran a pipe to each one and then been able to control them completely separately. But it a lot of our, like our Mallard Island one is designed pretty similar to this, where you flow through one wetland to get to another. And as long as you have some water control structures with boards in them and can manipulate that level, it still works really well. You know, so.
Cayla: It seems like more things to break.
Dan: Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Cayla: Based on my limited experience with this.
Dan: Yeah. You know, the biggest challenge, the biggest challenge probably has not been breaking so much as, for example, on Mallard, where we've been managing that for 20 years. Is things like beavers and muskrats deciding they don't like your water flowing through there. And there's actually one structure on Mallard Island where, and it's like a 5- or 6-foot-high structure. And the muskrats completely buried it completely to where it's over the top with vegetation. And yeah, so they can be a problem for sure, you know.
Casey: So there's a muskrat trapping opportunity out there.
Dan: There is anybody wants to go trap muskrats. That's the place to go. Can't seem to get anybody.
Casey: Dan will circle it on a map for you.
Dan: Yeah. I'll circle it. Yeah. So Yeah, so there's some challenges like that.
Cayla: I thought it was interesting last time we toured with, toured this like a month ago with Robert looking at the dry wetlands. But I guess I didn't think about, you know, you were asking like, will you leave these filled in the fall for hunting opportunity? And he said, well, we debate about that. But yeah, because from a productivity standpoint, letting them drain makes them more productive in the spring, which raises more broods. But obviously we are also trying to, so just balancing that hunting opportunity, but also production.
Dan: Right. That's exactly right. We kind of have to make some choices here and there, you know, and the ones that we have water in right now here should provide some fall hunting opportunities. And but the other ones were, our plan is kind of leave them dry till next spring. So. And then down the road as you can, you're going to want to try to, you know, leave a few dry for the next year, you might say, you know, and let them provide some pheasant habitat for a year or two. So jump that around a little bit.
Cayla: So this broken valve was all planned.
Dan: Yeah, yeah that right. Robert probably did that.
Cayla: Yeah. They're not keeping these open.
Dan: Yeah.
Casey: Yeah. There's always, there's always kinks to work out whenever you put a project in like this. But.
Dan: Right, right. And then, you know, we've had a few of those on Mallard Island too with that project. A time or two, the mice have got into the wiring on the pump and chewed it, you know, and then all of a sudden we're not pumping and it's like, what's going on? You open up this one box and it's full of mice. You know, it's like, oh, man. So little things like that.
Casey: If Robert didn't just win the award for technician of the year through a national organization, I'd say it was him that's the problem. He's the one key that's connected to all of them.
Cayla: Carried muskrats out there. Mice.
Dan: No, he has a lot of interest in this wetland stuff and done a heck of a job. So. Yeah.
Casey: So the other thing we didn't hit on yet was, you know, a lot of our management areas are not a lot of our management areas. A lot of our districts have at least a shooting range. Oh yeah. In their district on one of our wmas. And we've kind of we've kind of gone away from that now to the point where if there's going to be a new shooting range, we try to work to get a piece of property acquired for that purpose just so that it doesn't continually take from wildlife production as we move through that. But you have a shooting range on Riverdale WMA. Tell us a little bit about managing that. I mean, it's got it's got its drawbacks.
Dan: It's, it's we have a small range on Riverdale WMA down on the river bottom. It's just basically got one bench and then a handicap bench. You know, it's kind of designed for the guy to go shoot his rifle and slide it in for hunting and stuff. It's not really designed for some of the things that's getting used for.
Casey: Recreational shooting.
Cayla: Yeah, recreational or just recreating it seems like. Yeah. Not even.
Dan: You know, and, and I will say this, and this is kind of my opinion, but it's kind of unfortunate that we have a shooting range on our WMA there because it's it's some of the really super good hunting area on Riverdale WMA, and it just is kind of a big disturbance factor to the WMA there. I mean, it's a deer and turkey pheasant area. And if people would go down there and do what they're supposed to do and, you know, carefully shoot, it's probably absolutely fine. But it's the it's when somebody goes down there and is not just taking shots at the target and shooting other things and other places where it scares the heck out of you as a hunter using that area, you know, so it's designed well if people are shooting at a target on the backstop behind, you know, in front of the berm, unfortunately, that's not what happens all the time. And, you know, and it's been kind of a deal where there's been like too much abuse this spring. We really noticed a lot of stuff going on that wasn't supposed to be this spring down there. For example, people will shoot at things on the ground 20 feet from the bench. And we're very concerned that those bullets are going to ricochet out of there and end up somewhere else. There's an active gravel pit, mile and a half south of us that we don't want bullets flying down there and causing a problem, because that would get it shut down in a heartbeat if somebody got hurt. And, you know, people have been shooting the trees that are growing along the edge of the range to the point where they're completely decimated, you know, and it's like, well, where are your bullets going when you're doing that? Because some of those trees, if you were shooting at the top of the tree, you'd be shooting over the berm. Yeah. And it's like, what the heck are people doing? So anyway, we finally got kind of fed up with it. And we've actually put cameras up down there now, and we've had cameras in place for at least a month down there. And so like it or not, when you go down there shooting, you're on camera. And interestingly enough, it's we've learned a couple things. One, it's really busy, way busier than we thought it was. Two, apparently, it's a small minority of the people that are doing things they're not supposed to be doing because the vast majority are doing it correctly. So that's good. Three is, it seems to be having an effect, because we're not seeing much of the previous activities that were going on going on now.
Casey: So we know who you are. Yeah.
Dan: So I, I think it's been pretty beneficial, you know, and, and it's, it is neat to see that most people are doing things correctly. Yeah. You know, it's the same old thing. We always see a few bad apples wreck it for everybody. Right. And I think that's kind of what was going on. So but you know, on the positive side, it's really good to have a range there. You know, people need to sight their guns in and all that.
Casey: And we want them to buy ammunition and shoot some ammunition. Yeah, exactly. PR dollars.
Cayla: Yeah.
Dan: Yeah so we just kind of want them to follow the rules and everything will be fine. You know, so and we all use it, you know, it's important, you know. So would we, you know, would I say put more on WMAs? I'd say absolutely not if you if you can do it somewhere else because it does impact the habitat, you know, the hunting use and the wildlife use, it's definitely going to impact that some.
Casey: Well, and as we've lost habitat across the state too, it's just another little chunk of habitat that right is really off limits to wildlife production at that point.
Dan: Exactly.
Casey: So that's what one of the reasons why we've put up ranges in a few spots over the last few years, but they've all been an additive chunk of property, right? That gets vetted through a partner group or something. And, and then we go in and partner to acquire it. But.
Dan: Right, right. Yeah. So anyway.
Cayla: Yeah, I guess any career highlights or predictions as as your career sunsets, maybe we don't know.
Casey: Is it sunsetting?
Dan: Pretty soon I think
Cayla: I don’t know.
Dan: Well, I think, you know, there's, there's some challenges ahead for sure. One of the ones I wanted to mention was the woody encroachment we're seeing on our grassland areas. You know, we're, we're really big in our district on managing for upland game for waterfowl nesting and hunting opportunities. And what we're seeing is what they call the green wave in other states. We're definitely seeing that here. If you drive just east of here where we burn this spring, you'll see there's cedar trees all over in our grass plantings. And we don't want that, you know. There's, there's research out there showing that pheasants and other upland birds are going to avoid nesting close to those trees. And they're basically acting as raptor perches, place for a hawk can sit and wait for a brood to show up and come out and those kind of things.
Casey: I think that's something that a lot of hunters miss sometimes is you as season pheasant season goes along, you'll find them in trees. Yep. Because there's thermal protection sometimes in those trees. Oh yeah. But when it comes to nesting, they avoid them. And so, if you don't have nesting, you don't have them in the trees in the winter.
Dan: Right. And, and there's no doubt that in North Dakota, it's nice to have trees that provide some thermal cover. And we're all about that in our tree plantings, you know, and our tree plantings where we've actually planted them. But in our big expanses of grass, we've got areas here at Audubon that in 15 more years would be a forest, basically. Yeah. You know, and that's not what we're managing for. And so, we're, we're working hard to control woody encroachment. It's primarily eastern red cedar, Russian olive and Siberian elms. And it's a challenge. I mean, I think you could you could set somebody loose with a bobcat and a tree mulcher on Audubon and they could spend the whole summer here. You know, it's that bad. Yeah. And people don't realize it. And fire isn't like. Seems like what we're doing with fire is only really affecting the small trees or maybe two foot high when they get higher than that. It's not getting very many of them. Yeah. So we're doing a lot of chemical work with them. We're doing a lot of actual mechanical work. We're using fire where we can. And I know some people don't understand that. They think you're out there destroying habitat. Well, you know, we, we want grass plantings that are grass, you know, and then if you're going to use, for example, haying as management, people don't want a hay around ten zillion trees, you know. Yeah. So it doesn't work very good. And you know, from a cattle production standpoint, all those trees are taking grass away. You know, so the private landowner doesn't necessarily want that either. So yeah, it's quite a quite a deal and it's going to be an issue in the future, I think.
Casey: Yeah. And I think it's made us a lot more conscientious about what we plant in our tree plantings too.
Dan: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Casey: You know, right tree in the right place.
Dan: Yep. And. Exactly. I mean, an eastern red cedar in a tree planting provides a lot of cover. And. But they just are spreading everywhere. Just everywhere. And yeah. So. Another one I wanted to mention was a challenge in the future, I think is going to be cabins and housing development on Lake Sakakawea and Lake Audubon. In my career over 28 years, I've watched numerous cabin sites come in and what's happened is we've got these remote places in our WMAs where, you know, other than somebody's hunting or somebody's hiking or whatever, rarely saw people. And now there's a cabin site next to it that has, you know, maybe 50 people living there and some of them year-round and their dogs and cats are running loose, preying on wildlife. The, just the impact of that many people around, you know, has an effect on those areas. And then we're, you know, seeing the challenges of, okay, now this guy lives next to the WMA. So he wants to have a boat dock, you know, even though they're not allowed on WMAs or they want a path mowed down to the lake and all these things. And it's like, we want habitat there. We want tall grass. We don't want mowed paths, you know, and, and they want intakes for irrigating their yard. And, and so there's all these pressures on the Corps and game and fish, you know, to give people that happen to live next to us, special privileges. And, you know, there are other areas zoned on Lake Sakakawea for different uses that they might be able to get some of those things, but our job is to protect the wildlife habitat on these areas and keep it as wildlife habitat. Now that becomes more difficult when you have housing developing next to you and all these other interests. So and I don't see that going away. You know, I think it's going to be more and more.
Casey: The north side of Audubon all they're missing is a small gas station, grocery store and they don't have to, they got a town Bigger than Turtle Lake dang near.
Dan: Right. And I was here when there was no houses there. You know, so I know what it used to be like. And that would have been another example of area where not over not a lot of people, you know, showed up there other than to hunt in the fall and fish, fish a little bit and that kind of stuff. And now there's got to be, I don't know, 40, 50 houses there, you know, so that's what we're seeing. And, you know, it's maybe it's good for the taxes in the county, but it's probably not the best for a wildlife area, you know?
Casey: So yeah, it just starts to cause those I don't know if you even want to call them conflicts. It's, it's more of a challenge. They need something challenge. Yeah. I mean, it's like, like you said, I think we're going to be dealing with that for forever and probably increasing the other.
Dan: The other challenge I see coming is budgets. And it's not that our budgets really been cut, it's that the cost of everything has went up so much that this is probably the first time in my career where we actually have really had to worry about money. In the past 15, 20 years, we had enough money to do most of the projects we wanted to do. And you know, when we would encourage outside groups like Pheasants Forever and groups like that that would come to us and want to do some project on our WMA or give us some money. We would say go do it on private land somewhere because we have the money to do that. We'll just do it ourselves, you know, don't waste your money. You might say, or don't spend your money on a WMA when we already have the money to do it.
Casey: Let's make it additive.
Dan: Yeah. Make it additive. Yep. So but now we're kind of back in the boat of we're having to look for money because everything's gotten so more expensive. It's like they haven't really, I wouldn't say they've cut our budget, but our budget won't go very far anymore. Right. You know, so a good example is I went to the hardware store the other day to buy a bolt. I needed a bolt. It was $4 for one bolt. It used to be a dollar, you know. Yeah, yeah. It's like and that's everything. Everything we do, price of fuel, fertilizer, all the stuff we do has went up, you know, and sometimes multifold, you know. And so, the cost of doing business is just a lot more than it used to be, you know? So it's going to be challenging down the road.
Casey: So the cost of doing business is more, and we're starting to see kind of an equalization or, or reduction in some of those Pittman-Robertson dollars. You know, everybody does have a gun now. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. We gotta give them more opportunities to wear out those guns so they buy another one.
Dan: Exactly. So is there as the federal aid money goes down, yeah.
Casey: Then it takes a bigger chunk of our state dollars. Yeah.
Dan: Yep. So yeah. So that's going to be a challenge in the future I think. You know so.
Cayla: So you're saying good luck.
Casey: Good luck.
Dan: Well to some degree. I mean I see it going to be challenging.
Cayla: Yeah. Yep.
Casey: Yeah. Cool. Is there a hidden gem?
Dan: Hidden gem.
Cayla: Won't be anymore if he says it.
Casey: Maybe your favorite WMA to work on? You got one that you're like, man, if I could just spend my time down there, I would.
Dan: I would, I would say that that kind of Mallard Island would probably be, you know, if you asked what my favorite WMA was but Painted Woods would be awful close to that. You know, it's become a spectacular area. Yeah. Now that we got like a thousand acres there and, you know, wetlands and a lake, you know, a shallow lake there and all the food plots and the, all the grass plantings we're doing. And it's got a wooded portion, you know, and it's pretty spectacular area, you know, and when it floods, when it does flood in the spring, there's just thousands and thousands of ducks there. Yeah. You know, just incredible place to go view wildlife and stuff. So and then, you know, Riverdale that'd be is one of my favorite ones because I like to go hunt and those kind of things chase turkeys and that kind of stuff. And so, it's it's pretty cool too. We're really fortunate in this district. Got some really nice WMAs. And it's been really, you know, a pleasure to work on those. And I mean, you know, I, I tell people who gets to, who gets to go develop big wetland projects. Yeah. You know, that's pretty unique. You know, that we've got to do that and got a super good staff here to work with and all that. So it's been, yeah, it's been a pleasure to do that.
Casey: So yeah. All right.
Cayla: Thanks for being on. Yeah. We'll get into the department droppings so I can't believe hunting seasons are here. But the deer bow season opens September 4th.
Casey: Yeah. And then we have partridge and grouse opens September 12th.
Cayla: The youth deer season opens September 18th.
Casey: Yeah. And then we have the opportunity when you shoot some upland game to submit some wing envelopes. If you need envelopes contact our office. But yeah, send us envelopes that's how we tell what the hatch was like and how many, how many birds maybe were produced on the landscape adds to our database of knowledge.
Cayla: And then just as hunting seasons open and you're out there, just be careful and mindful of dry conditions. We've had a pretty dry second half of summer here. So check burn restrictions at ND response or fire restrictions. Don't park in tall grass.
Casey: Keep your stuff with you so you're prepared in case something weird does happen. Extra jug of water or something. All right, now that we've dropped the droppings, you can get off the pot and get outdoors.