Shallow Lake & Wetland Protection & Restoration Program - Phase VIII

This is Phase 8 of Ducks Unlimited's ongoing program to both Acquire and Restore wetlands and prairie on land for sale adjacent to existing Minnesota DNRs State Wildlife Management Areas (WMA). DU works with willing seller private landowners adjacent to WMAs that have drained wetlands and converted prairie uplands, and land on shallow lakes in need of protection. DU purchases and holds land title through it's Wetlands America Trust (WAT), DU’s supporting land-holding fiduciary organization, of which DU is the sole corporate member. Our goal is to help create functioning prairie-wetland habitat complexes and complement other conservation efforts to protect intact native prairie. Our work addresses the habitat goals in Minnesota's Long-range Duck Recovery Plan, Minnesota’s Prairie Conservation Plan, and the North American Waterfowl Management Plan. This work is time-sensitive because farmland adjacent to state WMAs is rarely offered for sale for conservation, and tracts are only available for a short time. DU works quickly, and has already spent most ML2017 and ML2018 OHF funds appropriated.DU works in close partnership with the Minnesota DNR Section of Wildlife, and coordinates with Pheasants Forever, other NGO partners, and local sportsmen clubs such as Swan Lake Area Wildlife Association and Cottonwood County Game and Fish League. Although approval is not requested from county boards for DU land acquisitions, DU communicates frequently with county and township officials to ensure local public awareness of our conservation work, and routinely attends county board meetings to discuss questions. The acquisitions and restorations proposed represents the amount of work DU can accomplish in three to five years, is scalable, and benefits game and non-game wildlife species alike - from mallards to monarch butterflies.Because 90% of our prairie wetlands have been drained and 99% of our prairie uplands converted in Minnesota, acquisition and restoration of prairie and small wetlands is critical – especially for breeding waterfowl in the Prairie Pothole Region of SW Minnesota where DU focuses our efforts. Furthermore, most remaining wetlands here are in poor ecological condition due to massive landscape prairie conversion to cropland and wetland drainage that degrades both wetland condition and habitat function for prairie wildlife. Although many of our remaining prairie wetlands and shallow lakes are contained within state WMAs or federal Waterfowl Production Areas (WPA), these small public land patches rarely provide optimal wildlife habitat due to their fragmented shape and small size. Similarly, most prairie shallow lakes are surrounded by a thin ribbon of uplands that fail to adequately buffer them from surrounding agricultural land runoff. Therefore, acquisition and restoration of drained wetlands and cultivated cropland in close proximity to our public lands will improve and buffer our public shallow lakes and remaining wetlands, and help create functioning prairie-wetland complexes of habitat for breeding ducks and other prairie wildlife. DU professional engineers and biologists work closely with DNR field staff to plan and implement both robust prairie and wetland restorations, including diverse native forb/grass seed plantings and complex wetland restorations that often involve extensive tile drainage systems.