Pheasants Forever cancels banquet, continues work
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News from Pheasants Forever – Mission Valley Chapter
LAKE COUNTY — After giving it much thought and consideration, the Pheasants Forever Banquet planned for earlier this month, was cancelled. Increased COVID cases provided the most significant basis for the decision since much of current membership are in an age category that puts them at higher risk.
Pheasants Forever will continue the habitat specialist contract through 2021 thanks to funds from a Federal North American Wetlands Conservation Act Grant, along with support from Federal and State partners.
The new contract habitat specialist in 2021, Liam O’Connor, recently graduated from North Dakota State University. He, Pheasant Forever volunteers and Bison Range personnel have treated 200 acres with selective herbicide, planted 70 acres with small grains for food plots, seeded 20 acres to enhance chick foraging and have enhanced invertebrate development food sources. According to Rod Richards, one of those volunteers and a Forest Service retiree who worked in the Flathead and Bitteroot Forests for 30 years, the habitat specialist contract is a unique cooperative effort. He said, “I don’t know of anything like it in the state or the nation …(we’re) getting good work done.”
In the past year and a half Pheasant Forever field projects included treating 700 acres of noxious weeks with selective herbicide, planting 93 acres of small grain food plots, mowing 123 acres for improved chick foraging as well as planting 33 acres of perennial nesting cover.
In Lake County there are nearly 3,400 Waterfowl Production Areas and many are full of noxious weeds, including introduced grasses that produce no significant habitat components for upland birds. Richards spends most of his volunteer management time on the 80 acres he sold to Pheasants Forever to keep the land part of a contiguous waterfowl area. So far, renovation has begun on only 10 percent of these areas and there’s much work ahead to accomplish habitat goals.
The Mission Valley Chapter of Pheasants Forever receives really good support from locals and Richards said he is “…proudest (of the fact) that whatever money we make is put into the ground here into habitat.” He explained that the grassland work supports everything up to Grizzly Bears, as well as birds, including Short-eared Owls, long-billed Curlews, all ground-nesting birds, and of course, pheasants.
Pheasant Forever membership dues help support these and other projects. Plans are in the works to fundraise additional monies with chances to win guns and outdoor equipment.
Sid Rundell, past president and habitat coordinator for many years of the Mission Valley Chapter of Pheasants Forever, said “What we are in the Mission Valley is such an incredible place with so much public land, tribal mitigation property and productive farms and we need to keep it that way.”
