The Outdoors

By Scott Rall, Outdoors Columnist

I am so glad that May 15 has come and gone. This date is the deadline for many of the projects I engage in for conservation purposes. When you light prescribed grassland fires for habitat regeneration this needs to be done by May 15. This allows the habitat interruption to take place before the onset of the primary nesting season.

The same is true for mowing newly planted CRP acres. These are required to be mowed in the early portion of the native grass and forb establishment period. This mowing is often done wrong. When mowing a new seeding you set the mower at about 12-18 inches high. What you are trying to do is knock off all the weed seed heads before they go to seed. Mowing too short can actually rip out some of the new plants by the roots as they are just getting established.

Other issues happen when you mow too short and the cut vegetation wind rows kill off most of the little plants caught under it. A corn stalk chopper works just right as it cuts up the veg and tosses it all over with no place being too thick and matted. To bad these implements are getting used less and less. I would like to buy an older one that could be pulled with a 70 horsepower tractor. Most of the ones I have found are too big for my baby equipment. Years ago I planted a small pollinator spot and one weekend while I was gone a friend of mine mowed it for me, he was doing me a favor, with a brush hog and killed a two-foot wide strip of flowers on every pass.

If you are over-seeding into an existing CRP contract, this is often required when the original CRP contract is expiring and you want to re-enroll those acres, this too needs to be done by May 15 for the same reason. If you are seeding a new CRP contract into an ag field that was harvested last fall you get until June 15 to complete this project as no nesting will have been started where no vegetation currently exists.

I do all of these projects as a side hustle to my full-time day job. This means they get done in the evenings or on the weekends. I just love it when the 1st of May shows up and the phone starts ringing when the folks figure out they only have two weeks left to complete the necessary practices and they have no time to complete them. I can sit on my hands for the entire month of April without the phone ringing and come May 1 all bets are off and the phone rings a lot.

I can generally help out, but it’s first come first serve and I can’t make a 24-hour day into a 72 hour one three days before the deadline. I had plenty of side hustle work and I do love this kind of work!

Nobles County Pheasants Forever had a habitat clean up day back in late April.Wwe had 25 people who showed up and each person volunteered nine hours that day. This totaled over 225 volunteer hours on a public land spot. We spent all of that time removing about three miles of fence and posts and cleaning up debris piles that seem to be just about everywhere there is a depression to throw trash. We hauled 16,000 pounds of recyclable steel and 12,000 pounds of just plain junk off to the recycler and the landfill. This spot is now totally safe for both dog and human utilization.

We had folks from all over the state come to help us. There is just something revitalizing about make habitat look pretty. Making it look like it did before modern civilization gives you a sense of being 1,000 miles from any other human.

Next on the list will be working on some special spots that have invasive trees popping up. These are the “one here and one there” kind of variety. Individual trees provide no beneficial habitat for wildlife. Groves or larger clumps of trees are generally left alone. They can provide winter habitat for all kinds of creatures. Individual trees only attract nest raiding predators like raccoons, skunks and possums. They also serve as high perches for raptor birds. This work is never ending. You can get one spot all cleaned up and five years later it needs it again. Having great habitat is not a one and done effort. Constant habitat maintenance is required to keep these spots producing maximum wildlife returns. I turned 63 a few months back and still have the desire and ability to chase around a lot. I will keep doing this important work until my health dictates otherwise and then I will need some young folks to help take over my place. If this kind of work seems interesting to you reach out to me at scottarall@gmail.com and we can include you and satisfy your curiosity and make you into a habitat champion too.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

If you have any questions, reach out to me at scottarall@gmail.com.