Roadsides are important habitat; delay mowing them

[HD]

Roadsides are important habitat; delay mowing them

People who own or manage land along Minnesota roads and highways are urged to delay roadside mowing until the beginning of August.

Leaving roadside vegetation undisturbed helps preserve thousands of acres of nesting and chick rearing habitat in southern and western Minnesota. A quarter to a third of all pheasants in the state are hatched in roadsides.

This year, pheasants will be hatching mostly in early- to mid-June. Chicks need at least three weeks to have any chance of escape from mowers. While mowing can delay or prevent nesting, so can other disturbances including burning, tilling, grazing and spraying herbicides.

Roadsides also provide important habitat for monarchs, mallards, teal, gray partridge, grassland songbirds, native pollinators, honeybees, frogs and turtles. The DNR website has more information about the value of roadside habitat.

[The General]

The farmer by me has already cut and bailed the road ditch.  FYI he raises zero animals. 

[Boar]

just a beutification process.

[Bobberineyes]

Might be boar but it sure pizzes me off. Way to many people and townships are doing this..

[Boar]

I agree, the DNR had a big write up a few years back or so if I remember, they should push it more

[The General]

I'm one the fence with this one.  Telling someone what they should do with a road ditch that buts up to their field I don't think is right but I do wish they wouldn't cut it.  Now the new mandate that is going into effect where they have to leave a buffer strip, with the reason contamination of the water, along ditched.  That one I really don't understand.  Ever ditch around here slopes away from the ditch.  If the reason is to stop contamination a buffer strip should be mandated around intakes.  Just one mans opinion.