WORTHINGTON — Clad in work gloves, a mix of blaze orange hats and likely spritzed with bug spray, 20 volunteers combined efforts to remove barbed wire and rusted woven wire fencing along property lines of three public land parcels Saturday in Nobles County.
The effort was organized by Nobles County Pheasants Forever to improve safety for hunting dogs and their owners who might otherwise get caught up in wire predominantly hidden by tall grass. Scaffolding Extension
The work day has become an annual event to assist the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, which doesn’t have the staff to handle all of the maintenance efforts.
“The DNR only has a certain amount of people that work in this area,” said Nobles County Pheasants Forever President Scott Rall, noting the area wildlife manager once had a dozen full-time and seasonal employees, and now has a staff of four or five.
“Our objective is to try to take WMA service work off of their plate, thus allowing them to concentrate their time on acquisitions, seedings, restorations, wetland work, and all of the things that we … don’t have the experience and education for,” Rall shared. “For example, they used to maintain wood duck boxes. This allows them to concentrate on the things that they’re really good at, and takes off the plate the things they don’t have time to do anymore.”
The Nobles County chapter was the first in Minnesota to adopt Wildlife Management Areas within the county — all 46 of them. Since then, a few other counties have followed suit, resulting in the Adopt a WMA program going from 12 four years ago to 246 adopted sites statewide today.
Scott Roemhildt, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Southern Region Director, said the state legislature established the Adopt a WMA program in 2011 to allow public land users to become public land stewards.
“The program had sort of been inactive for a number of years,” Roemhildt said. “In southern Minnesota, we started talking to, especially, Pheasants Forever chapters, Ducks Unlimited chapters — there’s a ton of interest.”
After Nobles County adopted all of its WMAs, Pheasants Forever chapters in Brown and Murray counties adopted their WMAs as well.
In addition to pulling fencing, the volunteers on Saturday straightened posts and erected new DNR and Adopt a WMA signs along the property.
“They’re also doing some removal of invasive trees, and then, if the weather cooperates, maybe a little bit of weed control as well,” Roemhildt said under cloudy skies that ultimately led to sprinkles Saturday morning.
Roemhildt said having the volunteers — nearly half of whom came from the Twin Cities — do maintenance was significant.
“It’s huge,” he said.
The volunteers divided into three groups, one group each to work at Lambert Prairie WMA, Bluebird Prairie WMA and Grothe WMA. Rall and Roemhildt, along with DNR Area Wildlife Supervisor Bill Schuna worked alongside volunteers at Lambert Prairie.
The original Lambert Prairie WMA was established in 1996, shared Rall, adding that three additional tracts of adjacent lands have been purchased by Nobles County Pheasants Forever since then. The latest acquisition is a 14-acre inholding that the Lambert family had retained ownership of.
“So, this started as an add-on and now it’s one of the better pheasant hunting complexes in southwest Minnesota,” Rall said.
The work done on the three WMAs will only improve the experience for hunters and their dogs come fall.
Rall said, however, that there’s an unlimited amount of work to do on the county’s WMAs.
“We try to do the vast majority of our big group events early in the spring so that we stay out of the spots during the primary nesting season,” he said. “We’ll still do some other, smaller projects after July 15, but the majority of the work is done in April and May.”
This year, attempts for a work day in April and May failed due to weather, and when a third date was set in June, it unfortunately coincided with the Windsurfing Regatta and Music Festival in Worthington. Rall said he lost some volunteers to obligations with the festival.
Still, he said Nobles County Pheasants Forever board members are out throughout the year, checking all of the county’s WMAs and doing some maintenance as needed.
“You don’t have to be a conservation organization to adopt a WMA,” said Rall, adding that Nobles County Pheasants Forever is interested in co-adopting WMAs with local groups and organizations, whether it’s a church group or even a business. Already, the chapter has co-adopted one WMA with the Worthington FFA Chapter. Rall would like to see more of those partnerships established.
“We would be more than excited to partner with … different groups,” he said.
Rall encourages the public to visit any of the WMAs in Nobles County, and said Lambert Prairie, located along Nobles County 9, about a mile and a half south of Nobles County State Aid Highway 35, is one to watch this summer as it is seeded into a mix of wildflowers.
On Saturday, the crew pointed out Maximillian sunflower, bee balm, wild bergamot, purple coneflowers, golden Alexander and both white and pink yarrow.
Sieve “Pheasants Forever works a lot on habitat for wildlife, pollinators and every other creature — songbirds — they all benefit from the work that we do,” Rall said.