I have been thinking of how we can get the idea across to land owners that wildlife is important and that there is a value for wildlife. Part of the problem is that too many of these landowners, they see no value to wildlife, or maybe even perceive a negative value to them. They only see animals (mainly deer and pronghorn) eating their crops and the hassle of having to deal with hunters and trespassing. I spoke at the last Division of Wildlife upland game public meeting (Regional Advisory Council) about extending the pheasant season from its current 10 day season to a 30 day season; the response I got from landowners at the meeting was that they didn’t want a longer season because they don’t want to have to put up with hunters and trespassing any longer than they already do. It’s hard to convince someone like this that leaving any possible cover for wildlife is important.
I have been thinking of how to change private landowner perception of the value of leaving wildlife cover, because the other day I saw the owner of a beautiful 10 acre field of tall grass out mowing the field with his tractor and PTO mower. I had been watching this field all season and had seen several pheasants fly into this thick cover. The grass cover was waist high, thick and fairly uniform and provided excellent hiding and overwinter cover for pheasants. Best of all, the field was adjacent to a corn field, now corn stubble, which provided an abundance of waste corn feed. The proximity of the feed to the cover was excellent, because minimizing exposure to predators is critical for a pheasant.
Unfortunately, the owner mowed the field to look about like a putting green. I believe he did so for several reasons, first, he didn’t see the value it provided to wildlife. Second, around here a clean manicured field says something about your self-perception as a farmer, and third, let’s face it, it’s fun to drive a tractor around and hack stuff down. The tragedy is that in our rural valley this provided some great pheasant habitat, that’s now gone. On a small scale it is a minor loss of habitat for a few pheasants, but cumulatively on a county-wide scale it is a significant loss.
Somehow we need to find ways to make wildlife more valuable to private land owners.
