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Project Profiles - United States
A National Environmental Treasure
by Jeff McCreary, Ducks Unlimited, Inc.
Utah’s Great Salt Lake is the “Bird Crossroads of the Intermountain
West,” offering both breeding-ground and migratory-staging habitat
for millions of birds traveling the Pacific and Central Flyways. The lake
is one of only two places in the Intermountain West Region to receive
the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network program’s “Hemispheric
Site” designation. The North American Waterfowl Management Plan’s
Intermountain West Joint Venture ranks its Great Salt Lake Focus Area
as its number one conservation priority. The lake has so many “best,”
“biggest,” and “most” designations that bird enthusiasts
can hardly keep track. The importance of this giant saltwater wetland
and its associated freshwater habitats to our feathered friends cannot
be overstated.
But birds aren’t the only ones to take advantage of what the Great
Salt Lake Basin has to offer. Close to 2 million people live in the Salt
Lake City metropolitan area, with thousands more arriving each year. A
recent National Geographic magazine article on urban sprawl listed this
Intermountain West area among the top 15 fastest growing regions in the
United States. Those who have lived here for more than 10 years can testify
to the dramatic increase in development pressures and in land values that
have occurred along the front range of the Wasatch Mountains, which delimit
the east side of the lake’s basin.
Thus, a conflict has arisen: wildlife needs versus human needs. Most
often, these are mutually exclusive conditions, and wildlife loses. .
.but not always. In 1999, a Great Salt Lake conservation partnership formed
whose mission is to safeguard the lake’s existing wetlands and restore
its degraded habitat before it’s too late. The partnership is well
on its way to doing just that. It received a $987,079 North American Wetlands
Conservation Act (Act) Standard Grant to help protect and restore more
than 16,500 acres of the lake’s wetland habitats. The partners added
another $3.2 million to finish the first of three phases anticipated for
this project. The outcome: 1,100 vital wetland and associated upland acres
have been protected through fee-title and conservation-easement acquisitions,
and the hydrologic regimes of more than 15,400 acres of wetlands on federal,
state, and private lands have been restored.
The Nature Conservancy (Conservancy) is one of the largest private habitat
managers in the Salt Lake City metropolitan area, and many of the areas
protected through the project are now enveloped within its Great Salt
Lake Shorelands Preserve. Davis County also contributed significantly
to the project by acquiring and donating easements on wetlands that the
Conservancy and the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (Division) will
manage.
The bulk of the wetland restoration efforts focused on the southern part
of the lake. Ducks Unlimited, Inc., provided the coordination, design,
and construction for each restoration site. On the Division’s Farmington
Bay Waterfowl Management Area, partners renovated and reconfigured the
water-management system to allow for precise and stable water control
on more than 5,000 acres. Similarly, at the Ambassador and New State Duck
Clubs, the partnership rehabilitated the clubs’ water-management
systems, allowing them to manage for the highest quality waterbird habitat
possible.
Other restoration activities occurred on the north side of the lake,
where freshwater wetlands are scarce. Here, at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service’s Bear River National Wildlife Refuge, partners restored
more than 500 acres of waterfowl nesting and brood-rearing habitat. Following
completion of this restoration project, waterfowl production showed a
marked increase.
The magnitude of wetlands and of waterbirds attendant to the Great Salt
Lake is unparalleled in the Intermountain Region, and the partners intend
to maintain this status. They, along with new partners joining them, have
embarked upon phase two of the Great Salt Lake Project with the help of
a $1 million Act grant, to which they have added $3.4 million to achieve
their conservation goals.
The partnership wants all Americans to have a future in which they can
experience the joy of seeing 500,000 Wilson’s phalaropes doing their
dervish-like dance in the Great Salt Lake’s saline waters, or 300,000
northern pintails elegantly gliding through the lake’s freshwater
marshes, or hundreds of thousands of eared grebes fattening up on brine
shrimp before continuing their migration. The Great Salt Lake with its
associated wetland habitats and their inhabitants truly comprise a national
environmental treasure.
For more information, contact Jeff McCreary, Intermountain Regional
Biologist, Ducks Unlimited, Inc., 2238 Westminster Avenue, Salt Lake City,
Utah 84108, (801) 474-9627, jmccreary@ducks.org.
Great Salt Lake Phase I Project Partners
Ducks Unlimited, Inc.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Utah Division of Wildlife Resources
The Nature Conservancy
Utah Wetlands Foundation
Davis County
Ambassador Duck Club
New State Duck Club
Friends of Bear River Refuge
R. Harold Burton Foundation
A Barrier Not to Be Overcome
by Walker Golder, Audubon North Carolina
North Carolina’s coastline has more than 350 miles of barrier islands.
These land formations were formed by centuries of shifting sands and are
shaped continuously by wind and water.
They not only protect the mainland’s marshes, sounds, and bays from
the erosive effects of ocean waves but also provide essential habitats
for birds and other wildlife.
In southeastern North Carolina, just north of Wilmington, between Wrightsville
Beach and Topsail Island, are two islands—Lea and Hutaff—that
have remained undisturbed by development, recreational activities, and
other interferences such as filching of sand for artificial dune creation
and beach renourishment. Instead, they have been battered by storms. They
have experienced flooding, overwash, accretion, and erosion until they
are now a low, narrow ribbon of sand joined by the closure of Elmore’s
Inlet that had once separated the two. But this is the way it should be.
Most barrier islands along North Carolina’s coast have been altered
significantly as a result of human intervention. Of the state’s
20 barrier islands, only 6 have habitat and conditions suitable for beach-nesting
birds. Only three have relatively low levels of disturbance. Lea and Hutaff
Islands are among only four that remain untouched by development and recreational
pressures.
These two islands support hundreds of nesting pairs of least terns and
black skimmers, a North Carolina species of concern, and 20 species of
shorebirds, numbering in the thousands, that either stopover during migration
or spend the winter. This narrow strip of sand and associated marsh, where
American black ducks and hooded mergansers spend the winter months, has
been designated a state-significant Important Bird Area. The islands also
provide nesting grounds for the loggerhead turtle, listed as threatened
under the Endangered Species Act, and a place for the state-listed seabeach
amaranth to spread its roots.
Lea and Hutaff Islands are among the last and best examples of a barrier
island off the North Carolina coast. In 1999, Audubon North Carolina (Audubon)
and North Carolina Land Trust, in partnership with North Carolina Division
of Parks and Recreation and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, launched the
Lea Island Conservation Initiative to forever protect it. Audubon had
previously negotiated a cooperative agreement with the owners of Hutaff
Island for its protection and management, which focuses on preventing
human disturbance to wildlife and habitat: nesting areas are posted, roped
off with sufficient buffer areas, and patrolled to prevent trespass and
habitat degradation.
The partners obtained a $6,579 North American Wetlands Conservation Act
Small Grant to assist with the acquisition of the upland beach portion
of Lea Island. They added another $72,456 to successfully purchase 15
of 23 tracts targeted for acquisition. Closings are pending on three additional
tracts. The initiative will continue until all of Lea Island is protected.
Then, partners plan to pursue permanent protection of Hutaff Island. They
see only one “barrier” in front of them, and that’s
how they want to maintain it.
For more information, contact Walker Golder, Deputy Director, Audubon
North Carolina, 3806-B Park Avenue, Wilmington, North Carolina 28403,
(910) 798-8376, wgolder@audubon.org, www.ncaudubon.org.
Pass the Steak, Hold the Potatoes
by Dan Duchscherer, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
North Dakota’s largest unfragmented tract of Northern Mixed-grass
Prairie—about 1 million acres—lies within McHenry County.
The county, known as the cattle capital of North Dakota, also contains
the majority of the Souris Lake Plain, an area containing wetland densities
that are among the highest in the U.S. portion of the Prairie Pothole
Region. Of the 148 migratory bird species breeding in the U.S. pothole
region, 90 are dependent on the grassland/wetland complexes found in the
Northern Mixed-grass Prairie Region.
As important as this habitat is in North Dakota, it is threatened by
permanent conversion to irrigated potato-production. Inflated land lease
prices offered by potato farmers combined with depressed livestock prices
provide a significant financial incentive to landowners to allow conversion
of their property. Potato farmers have been making a concerted effort
to locate lands not currently protected by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
conservation or wetland easements. Without permanent protection, significant
portions of the Souris Lake Plain are expected to be lost within the next
decade.
In 1994, a partnership formed and launched the multi-phased Mouse River
Project (mouse is the English translation of the French word “souris”)
to protect the plain’s habitats, which covers five counties, or
6,543 square miles, in north-central North Dakota. Ninety-five percent
of the land within the project area is privately owned, primarily by farmers
and ranchers. Partners have been knocking on the doors of willing landowners
for a number of years and are concluding the third phase of their project.
To date, they have acquired conservation and wetland easements to protect
18,000 acres of prairie and have restored or enhanced thousands of acres
more. Three North American Wetlands Conservation Act (Act) Standard Grants
totaling $959,000 supported their efforts. Partners added another $2,190,894
to get them through phase three.
“The benefits of these projects are two-fold: providing good quality
feed for my domestic animals and providing good habitat for wildlife,”
said property owner David Lautt. “It’s a good joint effort
and everybody wins.” The project partners helped Lautt establish
a 3,920-acre rotational grazing system and restore 492 acres of native
grass, plus the Service purchased a 690-acre conservation easement on
his property.
Private landowners are the project’s most important partners. They
own the vast majority of grassland and wetland habitats in the project
area, and they contribute time and money when they implement habitat improvements
on their land. The project’s success is inextricably tied to the
financial support and technical expertise of partners and to the willingness
of landowners to protect and enhance wildlife habitat for future generations.
And, it is Act grants that have provided the catalyst to bring them all
together.
As word of the Mouse River Project’s success and local support
spreads throughout cattle country, hopefully, more cattle producers will
be saying “no” to that extra helping of spuds.
For more information, contact Dan Duchscherer, Private Lands Biologist,
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, J. Clark Salyer National Wildlife Refuge,
681 Salyer Road, Upham, North Dakota 58789, (701) 768-2548, daniel_duchscherer@fws.gov.
Mouse River Project Partners
North Dakota Game and Fish
Ducks Unlimited, Inc.
North Dakota Natural Resources Trust
Pierce County Soil Conservation District
North McHenry County Soil Conservation District
South McHenry County Soil Conservation District
Renville County Soil Conservation District
Turtle Mountain Soil Conservation District
Private Landowners
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Lost and Found: Louisiana’s Coastal Prairies
by John Pitre, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service and Larry
Allain, U.S. Geological Survey
It’s hard to fathom, but in just 250 years, some 2.5 million acres
of coastal prairie that once blanketed in southwest Louisiana have dwindled
to just 200 in scattered parcels.
The journals of early settlers give us a peek at what it was like: “plentiful
game,” “seemingly infinite range for livestock forage,”
“long growing season.” As the human population grew, with
its concomitant increase in trade, the prairie’s demise ensued.
By 1920, overgrazing and large-scale land clearing, primarily for rice
production, had reduced the prairie to a fraction of its former self.
This loss has had substantial effects on avian species such as Bachman’s,
Texas olive, and Henslow’s sparrows, mottled duck, dickcissel, whooping
crane, and Attwater’s greater prairie-chicken, now extirpated in
Louisiana.
It is the business of the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service
(NRCS) to address habitat loss, and it’s been busy doing just that
in Louisiana. Since 1992, easements on approximately 150,000 acres of
marginal agricultural land, mainly in the Mississippi River Delta area,
have been purchased through its Wetland Reserve Program (WRP) and have
been restored to bottomland-hardwood wetland habitat. But May 2001 marked
a milestone for the agency: it acted on behalf of the imperiled coastal
prairie. Near the town of Gueydan, the NRCS purchased a 241-acre perpetual
easement on prairie disguised as Al and Delores Dietz’ rice-soybean
farm.
A partnership formed to support this project. The U.S. Geological Survey’s
(USGS) National Wetlands Research Center assisted in developing the easement’s
plan of operations. Approximately 130 acres of shallow-water wetlands
were restored to mimic the “platins” (nearly circular ponds)
and “marais” (little marshes) once associated with coastal
prairie (locally known as “Cajun prairie”). A series of low,
circular to elliptical mounds also were constructed to mimic the “pimple
mounds” that had dotted much of the prairie landscape.
A three-prong approach was used to restore the prairie with endemic plants.
First, partners hand-collected seeds from more than 50 plant species from
nearby prairie remnants. The NRCS purchased 1,200 pounds of seed collected
by a contractor at Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge,
which protects coastal prairie in Texas. The contractor planted seeds
in two 40-acre, landscape-level demonstration areas and in small-scale
experimental plots. Then, the NRCS and USGS will monitor these plots to
test a host of variables, including grass-forb ratios and the effects
of fertility, burning, and planting-date variance.
The third approach enlisted volunteers to transplant prairie sod to the
easement from an unprotected prairie remnant located less than 50 yards
away. On February 1, 2003, approximately 250 NRCS Earth Team Volunteers
transplanted sod containing numerous prairie species within predetermined
grids in the easement area. Volunteers were provided meals, shovels, water,
gloves, and “I Dig Prairie” T-shirts. During the lunch break,
several presenters spoke on the importance of prairie restoration.
When there’s a crisis, Americans are renowned for their willingness
to rally support. It’s no less true of Louisiana’s coastal
prairie partners. They found their cause, and they will not let their
coastal prairies be lost.
For more information, contact John Pitre, USDA Natural Resources Conservation
Service, 3737 Government Street, Alexandria, Louisiana 71302, (318) 473-7809,
john.pitre@la.usda.gov, or Larry Allain, U.S. Geological Survey, National
Wetlands Research Center, 700 Cajundome Boulevard, Lafayette, Louisiana
70506, (337) 266-8677, larry_k_allain@usgs.gov.
Louisiana Coastal Prairie Restoration Partners
Al and Delores Dietz
USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service
U.S. Geological Survey
Vermilion Soil and Water Conservation District
El Paso Field Services
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Ducks Unlimited, Inc.
Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries
Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development
Louisiana Cattlemen’s Association
Cajun Prairie Habitat Preservation Society
The Nature Conservancy
Numerous Volunteers
Hope for a Hawk
by Bill Fontenot, Lafayette City-Parish Consolidated Government
At 7:50 a.m. each and every morning for the past 15 summers, I’d
involuntarily hold my breath as I turned off of Pont des Mouton Road and
drove into the leading edge of the bottomland hardwood forest that densely
borders both sides of Louisiana Avenue in Lafayette, Louisiana. I work
at the Acadiana Park Nature Station and Trails, a small nature center
and trail system owned and operated by our local government, that is located
about a mile-and-a-half southeast of this intersection.
The reason for my suspended breath had hinged upon what rested atop the
utility lines at the corner of that intersection. Filled with anticipation,
I would look for the adult male broad-winged hawk that would routinely
perch on the highest line each morning to allow the rising sun to chase
the dew off its wings. Seeing this wild bird, doggedly holding on to what
remained of its breeding turf—150 acres of the last remaining forest
within Lafayette’s corporate limits—gave me hope and I would
breathe again.
In my years of working at the nature station, I have had the pleasure
of being introduced to numerous local woodland inhabitants, not only birds
like the broad-winged hawk, Mississippi kite, Acadian flycatcher, wood
thrush, and prothonotary warbler but also other delicate beauties such
as the gray tree frog, narrow-mouthed toad, broad-headed skink, southern
flying squirrel, and bobcat. Walking through the woodland’s beautiful
blooming plants, such as spider lily, short-stemmed iris, cardinal flower,
and southern shield, and encountering its insect life—especially
the moths—have always raised my spirits.
As the years rolled by, and Lafayette’s human population mushroomed
past the 100,000 mark, the handwriting was on the wall: we could count
on losing our forest to development, certainly by the dawn of the new
millennium. Then we’d simply have to make do with our existing 42-acre
nature trail system and hope that enough plants and animals would remain
to justify our environmental education programs.
During the spring of 1996, hope heightened when we got a call from the
grants director of Lafayette Consolidated Government’s Department
of Community Development. While browsing the Internet, she discovered
the North American Wetlands Conservation Act (Act) Grants Program, a U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service-administered program that supports wetland acquisition.
She was more than willing to write the grant proposal to acquire the hawk’s
forest, but she lacked the background to provide some of the technical
information needed. That’s where I came in.
During the 7 years that have elapsed since the spring of ‘96, we
received the $50,000 Act grant we applied for, but moreover, our initial
success attracted additional partners, allowing us to raise $360,000,
with which we have purchased more than half of the 150-acre wet woodland
that lies contiguous to the nature station’s trail system. It is
our goal to acquire the entire forested parcel.
If the broad-winged hawk could smile, I guess he would. I can tell you
this—I know that I’ll be breathing a little easier in the
summers to come.
For more information, contact Bill Fontenot, Curator of Natural Sciences,
Lafayette City-Parish Consolidated Government, Acadiana Park Nature Station
and Trails, 1205 E. Alexander Street, Lafayette, Louisiana 70501, (337)
291-8448, bbboy@naturestation.org, or Kelly Mouisset, Grants Coordinator,
Lafayette City-Parish Consolidated Government, 705 W. University Avenue,
Lafayette, Louisiana 70506, (337) 291-8437, kmouisset@lafayettegov.com.
Acadiana Park Bottomland Hardwood Forest Partners
Lafayette City-Parish Consolidated Government
Lafayette Parish Bayou Vermilion District
National Fish and Wildlife Foundation
Conoco
USGS National Wetlands Research Center
Lafayette Convention and Visitors Center
Louisiana Office of State Parks |