Homey Atmosphere Upland Restoration Program Offers Benefits For Landowners, Hunters And The Wildlife

Upland bird habitat isn’t all that’s being restored in Washington under the five-year-old Upland Wildlife Restoration Program.

“We’re putting people in the field for the benefit of landowners,” said Dan Blatt, program coordinator for the Washington Fish and Wildlife Department. “The results have been a big boost for hunters and wildlife, too.”

Bolstered by federal and state funding, the program has spent about $1.4 million a year on a habitat enhancement program that has one administrator and 19 men and women in the field working with farmers, Blatt said.

The program has secured habitat on about 1.2 million acres in Washington through purchase, leasing, or agreements. “Recently, we’ve been adding about 50,000 acres a year,” Blatt said.

“To me, the results are unbelievable,” he said. “Farmers are pleased because we’re trying to answer their needs. But the program also works for hunters buy providing access to these lands.

In 1990, only 300 landowners were in the state’s habitat development program, and not all of them allowed hunters access to the lands.

By 1995, more than 650 landowners were involved in the habitat program, providing public hunting access to 900,000 acres.

“We’ve had habitat enhancement programs for decades,” Blatt said. “But game wardens were the lead contacts, and they just didn’t have the time to respond to the needs of farmers and ranchers.

Most of the work has been in Eastern Washington involving tracts of 1,500-2,000 acres.

The key is having field staff living in small communities such as St. John, Davenport, Colfax, Pomeroy, Walla Walla, Waitsburg, Yakima, Tri-Cities, Ellensburg, Moses Lake, Electric City, East Wenatchee, and Omak, Blatt said.

“The only way to change the perceptions of wildlife management is to interact with the people,” he said.

The program has enlisted 114 landowners in Whiteman County alone.

But while hunter access is built in to most agreements, this isn’t a feel-free-to-hunt program, Blatt emphasized.

Participating landowners post their property with yellow signs that say hunting by written permission. In other words, the landowners make the gesture, but sportsmen must make the effort.

“This gives landowners control of who’s on their land,” Blatt said. “They don’t have to give permission to everyone. They can spread out the pressure. They don’t mind putting out the signs, but they don’t want maps printed that direct the world to their place.”

Years ago as a field biologist, Blatt was alarmed by the rapid decline of habitat. “Small pieces of permanent cover were being taken out left and right all over Eastern Washington,” he said. “Now the program is trying to put it back a little at a time.”

The plan calls for securing at least 50 acres of permanent habitat per square mile. In many cases, that’s enough to enhance wildlife production on the entire 640-acre section, Blatt said.

Working with countywide habitat maps, the habitat specialists try to establish a master plan for wildlife needs.

“The most crucial need in one area might be a grass patch,” Blatt said. “Another area might need a cistern. Brushy cover might be the priority over there.”

The program has used everything from volunteers to prison inmates for restoration projects that have planted 50 miles of shrub strips in Eastern Washington hillsides, Blatt said.

Sportsmen’s groups have provided a critical link for the program, Blatt said.

“Pheasants Forever and other local sportsmen’s groups have donated money to the program because they know it will get onto the ground,” Blatt said. “They’ve also provided 140,000 pen-raised pheasants as incentives to farmers.”

The program also incorporates some trapping and transferring of wild birds to give populations a boost in newly restored habitat.

“We’re using all these options because landowners have different needs. Some hand over acreage in exchange for a check. Others don’t want money, but they’ll make an agreement to enhance habitat if we’ll bring in a few turkeys or quail.

“For the effort of trapping and releasing 60 turkeys, we opened 30,000 acres of land to hunting overnight,” he said.

“We’re working to get off the negative with these people and get on the positive.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 color photos