Division of Bird Habitat Conservation

Birdscapes: News from International Habitat Conservation Partnerships

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