the reason for Not a Sighting, Habitat destruction at Big Creek State Park for cropland

[Clayton Will]

This didn't make my Christmas jolly. A quarter to half mile of hedgerow torn out along NW Madrid Drive between the two NW 100th st accesses. Ironic there is their own sign at that location that reads "Habitat is Key" when they tear out habitat to turn it back to cropland. This was a very popular access and dog walking area at a parking lot. The naturalist manager is a young 25 year old that has no idea what she is doing and I've told her that. For years I've said Big Creek State Park will be the first Treeless state park in Iowa. And so it continues. I have no idea what they are thinking. It's sure not rational.

It always used to be that edges were critical and they still are. Prairie and treeline edges are compatible but that's not what is being taught in college.

Clayton Will

Madrid

[Kevin Murphy]

Clayton,

There's a whole lot of nuance missing from your perception of habitat management. First and foremost, the area you are describing is NOT part of Big Creek State Park, it is part of Big Creek Wildlife Management Area. State Parks and WMA's have distinct/separate management goals and staff from each other. Areas around Army Corps reservoirs often have a complicated matrix of management organizations (Corps, DNR parks, DNR Wildlife, County) and goals/constraints, and it's vital to understand that structure to understand why things may be the way they are. Criticism of a management decision/plan is also different than a personal attack on agency staff that don't even have the management responsibility for the area in question, please do better going forward.

There's a lot of things that used to be true in the world of wildlife management that I'm quite grateful no longer are. Our understanding of the natural world and best habitat management practices changes constantly with the passage of time. In fact, there are lots of things that at one point were promoted in the name of habitat improvement or erosion control that in hindsight were profoundly bad ideas.....Autumn Olive, Multiflora Rose, Bush Honeysuckle, Buckthorn, and the list goes on. I'm guessing that the people involved in those decisions basically a century ago would choose differently if they saw the long term consequences of the introduction/spread of those invasive species. Historically some state and federal governments paid bounties for the persecution of predators including raptors in some places (a Red-tailed Hawk was worth 50 cents to the state of Maryland when their bounty program was active)...I'm pretty grateful wildlife management has changed since those times.

Promotion of edge habitat historically definitely was a benefit to recovering our White-tailed Deer population (the first modern hunting season was a limited effort in 1953 after basically total extirpation from the state by early settlement). During that same time period Iowa's landscape was fundamentally different from today with much smaller agricultural fields in constant rotation that included lots of pasture and small grains that were also beneficial to wildlife. The world around us is fundamentally different today than it was decades ago with a whole suite of new constantly evolving challenges and priorities for conservation, ignoring this fact is at our own peril.

There are definitely a suite of species that benefit greatly from early successional edges between woodland and grassland...Brown Thrashers, White-tailed Deer, Baltimore Oriole, Raccoons, and many more edge-loving habitat generalists. The other side of that coin is that other species are harmed by the presence of this same habitat type like Henslow's Sparrow, Bobolink, Northern Harrier, and a whole suite of other species that are grassland specialists. There is lots of published research on landscape habitat associations for birds, including work done right here in Iowa, that repeatedly demonstrate these relationships. 

There are winners and losers in every single habitat management decision, and if we have to make choices about those winners and losers I'm quite comfortable with public land managers choosing to focus on the most imperiled habitat types for their efforts. Iowa doesn't lack edge habitat, but has lost functionally all of its historical grasslands. Iowa also ranks 49th (out of 50 for those keeping score) in the United States for availability of public land...with such a limited public resource it makes sense to try to manage for the most imperiled habitat types. I am not anti-edge-habitat, and happily spend a lot of time birding/hunting lots of scrubby edges. I am just able to recognize that our public resources need to be managed for long-term sustainability and preservation of entire imperiled ecosystems and not just my favorite activity to do on that public parcel. Do I like or agree with every decision made by the Iowa DNR? Definitely not. In spite of this do I also think that the Iowa DNR needs every bit of support and help we can muster? Resoundingly YES.

Good Birding,

Kevin Murphy, Boone

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[Dinsmore, Stephen J [NREM]]

I’ll second everything Kevin says. Clayton’s message is full of errors and misinterpretation – this won’t be turned into cropland, “habitat” is a vague term and what is being created will be better “habitat” for some birds (and other wildlife) and worse for others, much of what is being removed is invasive honeysuckle and eastern red cedar, etc. Plant succession is a natural part of managing “habitat”. If left unmanaged, this early successional habitat will quickly disappear. The edges Clayton mentions are maintained by disturbance. As I’ve mentioned on this list previously, many of the local and uncommon bird species we enjoy benefit from this disturbance – Yellow- and Black-billed cuckoos, Willow Flycatcher, White-eyed and Bell’s vireos, Yellow-breasted Chat, Orchard Oriole, Blue-winged Warbler, and others plus all of the common birds using this habitat. Remove this disturbance and these species will disappear. Period. A great example is the east side of Big Creek State Park where it progressed from mostly grassland in the 1970s and 1980s to a scrubby and brushy area with small trees in the 1990s and 2000s, then to its current state of a much taller forest with a honeysuckle understory. Several of the birds I just mentioned used to breed here in small numbers and are now absent. Disturbance in the area noted by Clayton may create habitat for some of these species in the near future. This is a good thing. Disturbance thus has many benefits and should not always be viewed as a negative.

 

Thanks for taking the time to read this note.

 

Steve

**********

Stephen J. Dinsmore

Professor and Chair

Department of Natural Resource Ecology and Management

Interim Director, Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture

Iowa State University

209 Science II

Ames, IA 50011

Phone: 515-294-1348

E-mail: coo...@iastate.edu

Web: https://faculty.sites.iastate.edu/cootjr/

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[ri...@mchsi.com]

I am sure that the DNR knows more about habitat and what needs to be done to preserve it in Iowa than the general public.  I just wish when they did disturb a site that they would then post a sign with the icon that you scan that would explain what they did and why.  This would be so helpful to the public to then understand why their favorite spot for birding is gone.

Rita Goranson

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