As a newcomer to South Dakota, we're still a bit puzzled by the state's exceptionalism. Take, for instance, the last paragraph in this passage in Thursday's Brookings Register article, Smith wants ‘wildlife-habitat stamp’, reported by John Kubal:
The senator does plan to introduce and champion a bill of his own, driven by his being “a pheasant hunter every year for the past 50 years.”
By way of background, Smith explained that precision agriculture practiced by a smarter generation of ranchers and farmers has meant there “are not many inches of ground that do not go unused out there. And with the extensive use of chemicals killing weeds and this and that, we’re losing ground in habitat.”
He noted that South Dakota is the only state of those it borders that “does not charge a wildlife-habitat stamp. I’m introducing legislation that does charge residents $10 a year and non-residents $25 a year for both hunting and fishing. (It would) raise $6 million.”
Smith explained that in the state’s 700-plus game production areas, “we would start putting in food plots and pollinator plants, all those things that grow pheasants, where ducks can lay eggs and where deer can lie down.”
“We need to do something,” he added. “This is the fewest number of hunting licenses since 1938. I’ve been working on this since April.”
(A Game, Fish and Parks official put last season’s decrease in numbers at 26,000, noting that it resulted in lost revenue of $1.15 million.)
“It’s alarming,” Smith said. Noting the dollar decreases in smaller communities, he added, “They’re hurting, not simply because of the farm economy but because – it goes back to tourism.”
Finally, looking close to home, he said, “There are people in Brookings who are going over to western Minnesota to hunt pheasants, because they have more pheasants than we do. That’s an abomination.”
That might be a shock to Minnesotans--both the diction and the notion that pheasants (and pheasant hunters) are abundant in Minnesota. In December, John Myers reported in the Duluth News Tribune article, Minnesota DNR releases duck, pheasant plans:
The [pheasant] plan notes that pheasant license sales have dropped 57% over the last 12 years as pheasant numbers have generally declined. That decline has been blamed on a major decline in federal Conservation Reserve Program acres.
Read the MN DNR pheasant plan here.
In October 2019, the Star Tribune reported in Where are all the pheasants? Habitat loss is tied to more farming:
Minnesota farmers have withdrawn hundreds of thousands of acres from the government’s biggest conservation program in the last decade, shifting land that was set aside for grasses and wildflowers back into corn, soybeans and other crops.
As a result, the state has lost about 1,200 square miles of protected land — an area the size of Rhode Island — that was key habitat for Minnesota’s prized pheasants, ducks, jack rabbits and a variety of pollinators.
The state’s wildlife populations have declined in tandem with that shift and are unlikely to recover unless habitat is restored, said Tim Lyons, an upland game research scientist at the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.
“This is kind of what we expect now, given how habitat and farming practices have changed,” he said. . . .
Across Minnesota, DNR biologists, game wardens and volunteers have been traveling down the same gravel roads and quiet routes every August since 1955 to survey a key environmental indicator: pheasant populations.
Their findings this year were bleak.
In Cottonwood County, where spotters counted more than 200 pheasants a decade ago along the roadsides and fringes the birds seem to love, the surveyors found just over a dozen this year. To the west in Pipestone County, where about 120 pheasants were seen every year in the mid-2000s, the researchers are now lucky to spot 25.
Altogether, Minnesota’s pheasant population is estimated to have dropped 60% from its long-term average.
The primary reason is habitat loss, Lyons said. Pheasants and other grassland birds and prairie species prefer dense, grassy fields that give them cover for nesting and lots of insects for feeding. With so many of those acres converted to weed-free rows of corn, hunters may find dramatically fewer birds than in years past.
The causes of Minnesota's declining pheasant numbers and habitat loss seem fairly close to those affecting South Dakota's birds.
In 2018, Pheasants Forever reported in Special Report: How do Decreased Pheasant Stamp Sales Affect Conservation?:
States across the pheasant range have varying requirements when it comes to the stamps and licenses hunters must purchase to legally pursue ring-necked pheasants.
Some states require nothing more than a general small-game license, while others require hunters to purchase stamps specific to pheasant hunting. A general habitat stamp is the ticket you need in some places, while still others require stamps only when hunters are targeting birds on specific types of property.
At the end of the day, stamp sales (or their equivalent) often tie closely to ringneck habitat projects and upland hunting prospects. We explored the impact of lower pheasant-specific revenues in a lineup of states.MINNESOTA
In Minnesota, hunters bought about 72,000 pheasant stamps (required of everyone who targets pheasants) for the 2017 season, according to the Department of Natural Resources (DNR). The stamps sell for $7.50 apiece and the proceeds go directly back into habitat projects.
As recently as 2006 and 2007, hunters bought about 129,000 pheasant stamps in Minnesota.
While DNR officials hate to see such declines, they also say the state is in a good position because funding for habitat is broad-based. In 2008 the state’s voters approved an increase of three-eighths of 1 percent to the state sales tax, with a third of that increased revenue – about $100 million per year – earmarked for fish and wildlife habitat. The state also has other dedicated sources of funding for conservation and habitat.
“There is a direct financial loss and that means we are going to be going ‘X’ number of dollars less of habitat work out there,” said Greg Hoch, prairie habitat team leader for the Minnesota DNR. “But the bigger picture is there are fewer people interested in hunting and therefore lobbying for hunting concerns, lobbying for a strong conservation title in the next farm bill, and perhaps not buying as much hunting equipment and therefore fewer (Pittman-Robertson) revenues.”
“For a lot of us,” Hoch says, “what really matters is the lack of people’s voices and a reduced number of citizens out there who are going to bat for conservation. That’s probably more important than the actual dollars lost.”
We're not adverse to Smith's plan to a pheasant stamp, as much as his word choice is troublesome. It's his notion that somehow Minnesota's birds and hunters have been spared from the forces of national farm policy and practice that cause loss of habitat--that notion seems like fake news.
Image: Minnesota Pheasant Stamps, via Special Report: How do Decreased Pheasant Stamp Sales Affect Conservation?.
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