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Unsung Heroes: Wildlife managers do dirty work to help maintain nature's beauty for our enjoyment

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The Outdoors
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By
Scott Rall, outdoors columnist

I never really figured out what I wanted to do after high school until I was about 28 years old.
After graduation I took a few years off from schooling in the sales and marketing arena. I sold cars and then newspaper subscriptions.
At age 28 I decided I wanted to be a regional fisheries manager for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.
However, this would have required six more years of school and then a half dozen years working my way into that position. I had two little kids and I just couldn’t do that many years of school and no money.
The next best thing was to enter the world of financial services, be pretty good at it and then spend my free time in natural resources and conservation work.
Now I hang around with area wildlife managers. As it worked out, the wildlife side of conservation and management was where I found my sweet spot. As a result, I have spent countless hours working with and learning from these people I so admire.
Do you ever wonder what a DNR wildlife manager does? They usually manage the public lands in about four counties, depending on how big the county is.
My closest friend in this position manages the public lands in Rock, Nobles, Murray and Lincoln counties in southwest Minnesota.
Most work areas that once had five to seven employees are now operating the same number of acres with two to three people. This is a crying shame.
The area wildlife manager is the front-line person for every issue that affects public lands. Most of these acres are Wildlife Management Areas, prominently marked with yellow signs. 
They need annual management, like removing invasive volunteer trees, managing food plots with area farmers, and cooperating with local livestock producers to allow intermittent grazing on selected areas that can benefit from the practice.
The biggest and most common issues many managers face today relate to water. In the past several years we’ve had unsurpassed amounts of annual rainfall.
Wetlands provide important wildlife habitat and also slow flood waters and reduce downstream pollution.
So, what do you think slowing down water does to an area wildlife manager? It generates complaints from all over their work area when farm drainage is suspected of being adversely affected.
Beavers will do what beavers do and this results in tons of calls to address those concerns in a matter of hours, not days. Never mind that it rains 6-7 inches in a 24-hour period about every three weeks the past five years, this year being the exception.
Wildlife managers also deal with weeds, such as poison hemlock, which will burn the skin of just about anyone who touches it. Every report of this plant needs to be followed up by the area wildlife manager and monitored every year to insure it does not come back.
How may spots might this be? Maybe 100 or more. This is an additional duty with no additional staff or hours in the day to do it.
The list continues.
If there are additional public land acres added to the outdoor recreation system that need restoration and seeding, this duty falls squarely on the area wildlife manager. Seed acquisition, contractor agreements, insurance mandates and much more for each and every project are completed.
If I were to list all the responsibilities of an area wildlife manager, the entire edition of the paper you’re reading could not hold them all.
These folks are dedicated people who love what they do, and I love helping them do it.
The DNR is easy to pick on because of rules and regulations to protect the natural resources of the state.
More than a small percentage of the people would just love to trample over those regulations in the search of a dollar, but wildlife managers help to protect natural resources.
The next time you drive by some citizen-owned land managed by the DNR in Minnesota, ask yourself, “If not for this citizen-owned land in my county, would there be any wildlife in the area?” Not where I live.
Get to know these wildlife professionals and give them all of the benefit of the doubt.  They do very hard work under some pretty difficult circumstances. Beavers get a break from me; they are only doing what nature intended.
 
Scott Rall, Worthington, is a habitat conservationist, avid hunting and fishing enthusiast and is president of Nobles County Pheasants Forever. He can be reached at scottarall@gmail.com. or on Twitter @habitat champion.

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