New Duck habitat for Big Stone NWR

[Bufflehead]

 Ortonville, Minn

 Jon Schneider has watched as flocks of Mallards, so dark and dense they reminded him of stories from the turn of the century. They flew from Big Stone National Wildlife Refuge in western Minnesota to southern Grant County

 The refuge serves as a major holding area for all of westcentral Minnesota, according to schneider, Ducks Unlimited manager of Minnesota conservation programs.

 Now, it's getting an infusion of money aimed at bolstering it's habitat and ability to hold and attract waterfowl and other bird species. Big Stone officials have pondered the project for almost 20 years but it's larg size and high cost precluded it from happeninguntil now.

 The 1 million project includes installation of three water control structures that will allow U.S. Fish&wildlife service to manage water levels in the 1,662 acer pool 7 wet-lands.

 The work at Big Stone NWR highlights wet-land projcts that will be completed across Minnesota this fall, thanks to a 1 million dollar federal Minnesota Marshes grant to DU that's matched by $2 million in non-federal funds. Size and cost set the Big Stone project apart .

 It's farly rare in these times to spend $1 million dollars on one are sais, Schneider.

 Ducks Unlimited completed the engineering of the Big stone project earlier this year, and work is scheduled to begin in September. The project will give managers more control of water in the refuge.

 They will be able to refine their water level management and it will basically split their flood pool in half,  schneider said. Rather than having one big pool thats got some shallow habitat, but a lot of habitat that is too deep in order to get water throughout(the pool), they can now have two pools that are more optimally managed with shallow water.

 Refuge managers will be able to manage water levels at about a foot deep, which will help grow aquatic plants and invertebrates, schneider said.

 in addition to waterfowl and other birds, like shore birds