opinion

How pheasant hunting can save rural Iowa, farming and the environment

Missouri Valley, Ia. — Clay Bowman expects a big harvest this fall among the Loess Hills and Missouri River bottomlands: a bounty of visitors wearing blaze orange and loaded with green.

“The word definitely got out this fall,” said Bowman, president of the Harrison County chapter of Pheasants Forever. He’s seeing dove and teal hunters from Nebraska, Missouri and Kansas, and he expects local hotels and restaurants to fill up when pheasant season starts next month. “The out-of-state money is what I like.”

The secret that’s attracting hunters to Harrison County is 4,300 new acres of grassland and other habitat on private land but open to public hunting. And it’s just a piece of a larger effort by groups like Pheasants Forever to restore Iowa’s once mighty bird populations — and create more habitat in a state ranked 49th in public land ownership.

What’s happening in southwest Iowa should matter to more than hunters and hotel owners.

Increasing game-bird habitat could be a trick shot that targets three huge problems for Iowa: rural decline, degraded water and soil quality, and falling farm incomes. Long-term conservation programs in the Farm Bill have been shown to reduce nutrient runoff while boosting wildlife and farmer profitability.

Here’s the problem: shrinking federal and state budgets. For example, the Iowa Habitat Access Program — which provided money to landowners to add habitat in return for allowing hunting on their land — no longer has funding.

The answer, however, isn’t necessarily increases in government funding. A more targeted approach — called “precision conservation” — can identify the most environmentally sensitive land and give taxpayers the best bang for their buck.

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Practices such as setting aside huge swaths of land may be impractical amid tight budgets and pressure to produce more grain, argues the McGraw Center for Conservation Leadership in Dundee, Ill., which is calling for a new approach to conservation.

“Not all lands are equal for delivering conservation benefits,” said Alex Echols, a consultant to McGraw who has written portions of past Farm Bills. “We need a better decision-support system to determine which parcel supports what practice.”

That includes helping farmers use technology to identify money-losing parts of fields that have highly erodible soils or are susceptible to fertilizer runoff. Such nutrients flow from places like Harrison County to the Gulf of Mexico, where the “dead zone” has grown to its largest size since mapping began 32 years ago.

Farmers rethink planting ‘gumbo’ soils

Lee Wisecup stands atop a dike that separates Willow Creek from a sea of corn and soybean fields north of Missouri Valley. As the Loess Hills rise in the distance, he points out a low spot in a field where ponds form in the spring. “We’d always lose our crop, and the water would get off just in time to replant,” he explained.

He and his son, Arthur, suspected they were losing money in those low-lying areas. Arthur, 25, studied environmental science at Doane University in Nebraska and had begun introducing new technology to the farm. But any changes weren’t up to them alone.

Fourteen members of the Wisecup family have ownership stakes in the operation, which has been in the family since the 1850s. Some of them live in Philadelphia and Houston. Some are in their 80s. They include Lee’s father, who also worked the “gumbo,” as they call the sticky soil in the Missouri River bottomlands.

The Wisecups wanted data to show the relatives that it was time to stop planting every inch. For help, they turned to a team from Pheasants Forever, the Natural Resources Conservation Service and Heartland Co-op. Using software from Ames tech firm AgSolver, they laid a map showing field elevation over a map showing returns on investment, and the low spots matched.

“We could show them that instead of losing $100, we can make $25” in those areas, Arthur Wisecup said.

After this fall’s harvest, the Wisecups will convert those low-lying areas to wetlands and other habitat. Almost 250 acres scattered among the 1,850 they farm will go into the Conservation Reserve Program.

“We’re signed up for 10 years, but we’re probably not farming that ground again” — if the program will be available, Lee Wisecup said.

That depends on the 2018 Farm Bill. Many conservation programs have a backlog in applications, but the Wisecups signed up in time, said Ryan Heiniger, director of agriculture and conservation innovations for Pheasants Forever/Quail Forever. “We would not be able to make these changes now,” he said. “We have to have the tools.”

Pheasants Forever is using other funding to continue its precision conservation work. In July it received a $73,000 grant from the Iowa West Foundation to work with farmers in Pottawattamie, Fremont and Page counties in southwest Iowa, with the goal of turning unprofitable cropland into hunting ground.

Most large farmers have equipment that captures data from planting, harvesting and other operations. But a national study by Stratus Ag Research in late 2016 shows that less than half of the farmers surveyed analyze the data.

Such information could be crucial. An Iowa State University study found that in 2015, around 6.2 million acres, or about 27 percent of all Iowa farmland devoted to row crops, lost $100 or more per acre.

Why are farmers working more than a quarter of farmland if it’s unprofitable? Because in previous years, high grain prices and crop insurance hid some of those losses, the study’s authors said.

That’s another reason to take a new approach to the next Farm Bill, one that will benefit fowl and farmer.

Could Iowa once again be pheasant heaven?

The December 1973 Field and Stream magazine called Iowa’s bird population “remarkable” and noted that the state had topped the country for seven consecutive years in pheasant harvest.

In 1971, hunters bagged 1.8 million roosters. In 2016, that total fell to fewer than 250,000, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources reported.

Iowa’s pheasant population began to suffer in the 1980s as increased corn and soybean planting replaced habitat. Enrollments in the Conservation Reserve Program helped numbers, but not for long. Fewer CRP acres and bad weather hurt populations in the late 2000s.

South Dakota replaced Iowa as the top destination for pheasant hunters. That state's Department of Tourism estimates pheasant hunting generates $223 million in retail economic impact. The season attracts 143,000 hunters, compared with about 57,000 in Iowa.

Drought is expected to hit South Dakota’s pheasant population hard this year. Iowa’s, meanwhile, is expected to be similar to or slightly down from last year, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources has reported.

Why should you care if you’re not a hunter? Well, restoring Iowa’s game-bird glory could have other benefits.

“Pheasant habitat is great monarch butterfly habitat,” notes Alex Echols, who leads the Heartland Waters Initiative for the Max McGraw Wildlife Foundation.