Anderson: Pheasants, ducks, butterflies: Their chances — and yours — improve 80 acres at a time

Radiologists can look at an X-ray and determine fairly quickly whether the image they’re seeing is of a healthy person, or a sick one.

Similarly, hunters and other conservationists can examine the photograph accompanying this column — which I took after a recent late-season pheasant hunt — and assess the health of the land pictured and the type of wildlife it supports.

The snapshots suggest the landscape is healthy.

Enough grass, for example, is present to hold the soil together, enriching it with organic matter while preventing erosion and keeping nearby streams and wetlands clear of runoff.

Also, in spring and summer, the thick grass will be abuzz with insects, which will feed pheasants and songbirds, which in turn will be preyed upon by redtails and other hawks, as well as foxes and coyotes.

Thus, in the micro-environment pictured, a circle of life exists that is often unseen and even more often unappreciated — yet is as old as time itself.

And just as fleeting.

Because since statehood in 1858, more than 98% of Minnesota native grasslands have been plowed under, and in the state’s farmlands, almost as many wetlands have been lost.

Not as visible as mountains or oceans, these natural resources are nevertheless just as valuable, and their losses have not only changed our landscape, they’ve changed us.

More tellingly, they’ve reflected our values. And not for the better.

As the late conservationist Aldo Leopold said, “The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: What good is it?”

Plenty good, say a cadre of Murray County residents in southwest Minnesota.

It’s there that the urgent effort to conserve what’s left of the state’s shallow lakes and wetlands was waged anew last year when Larry Aanenson, a Fulda, Minn., real estate agent, alerted the Department of Natural Resources that 80 acres of land adjoining Badger Lake Wildlife Management Area was for sale.

“With shoreline on South Badger Lake, and with adjoining uplands, I thought it would be a perfect piece of land for the DNR to buy,” said Aanenson, who has hunted the area for more than 40 years.

In other states, Aanenson’s tip likely would have gone nowhere because of insufficient habitat funds. But in Minnesota, where in 2008 voters overwhelmingly approved the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment, creating the Outdoor Heritage Fund, DNR area wildlife supervisor Bill Schuna knew the land’s purchase was a possibility.

Underwritten by a fractional portion of the state sales tax, the Outdoor Heritage Fund in 2024 paid for 50 habitat projects throughout Minnesota totaling $181 million.

Encouraging about the Murray County property, Schuna said, was that neighboring farmers hadn’t bid on it because it wasn’t prime cropland.

“I filled out a wildlife acquisition form for the Badger Lake property that we [the DNR] use to detail what a property is like now and what can be done with it to benefit wildlife,” Schuna said.

After DNR staff in St. Paul approved the acquisition, the information form was sent to Jon Schneider in Alexandria, Ducks Unlimited’s senior manager of conservation programs in Minnesota.

Along with Pheasants Forever, the Trust for Public Land and other conservation groups, Ducks Unlimited (DU) plays a crucial role in establishing and restoring wildlife habit in Minnesota. Guided by strict protocols about where and how Outdoor Heritage Fund money can be spent, DU and the other groups often can act more quickly than the DNR to purchase important tracts of wildlife land when they’re offered for sale.

“In this case, when I heard about the 80 acres in Murray County, I contacted the real estate agent and drove to Fulda to meet him and to inspect the property,” Schneider said. “I agreed with Bill [Schuna] that it had great possibilities, not only for ducks, but for pheasants, songbirds and butterflies. Also, the upland portion was bordered by a hardwood ridge, which would support deer and turkeys and help buffer the lake.”

Two state-approved appraisers valued the property at $560,000.

“Sometimes we’re outbid for property because we can’t pay more than its appraised value,” Schneider said. “This time we were fortunate to be the buyer.”

Since the Legacy Act’s inception, DU has purchased about 75 parcels of wildlife habitat totaling 8,000 acres using the Outdoor Heritage Fund. Each property, which by law must be open to hunting, is subsequently donated back to the DNR for establishment as a state wildlife management area.

DU’s 23 Minnesota employees, including eight engineers and technicians, nine biologists, four grazing specialists and an agronomist, in addition to Schneider, often design and construct water control structures and remove sub-surface drainage tile to restore wetlands on acquired lands.

On this property, the DNR will seed the uplands with a mixture of more than 100 plants in an attempt to restore native prairies the state has lost.

“Diversity matters with the prairie seed mix,” Schuna said. “We not only want to benefit game birds such as pheasants and ducks, but songbirds and butterflies.”

Important as these conservation efforts are, they pale in comparison to the actions — and more often inactions — of governors and legislators and presidents and members of Congress.

They’re the ones who, through the federal farm bill and other legislation, can make landscape-scale improvements to the nation’s land and water, ensuring not only that farmers can earn livings commensurate with their efforts and investments, but that our well water isn’t tainted, our streams aren’t choked with silt, our fish are edible, and that wildlife populations can thrive.

So far, with notable exceptions, that hasn’t happened.

Until it does, conservationists will restore 80 acres here and 80 acres there, photographs of which, at the end of a day’s productive hunt, will affirm the landscapes’ good health.

As Leopold said:

“We shall never achieve harmony with land, any more than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty for people. In these higher aspirations the important thing is not to achieve, but to strive.”