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landowner requests for assistance through the popular Environmental Quality Incentive Program, which helps deliver conservation on working lands.
Most recently, conservationists have been sounding the alarm on a plan to redirect nearly $ 300 million from the Land and Water Conservation Fund( LWCF) earmarked for purchasing public lands in order to pay for a new maintenance program within the LWCF, this in spite of the fact that the 1964 law that created the LWCF didn’ t intend for the funds, which are derived from the sale of energy leases on public lands, to be used in such a way. Critics of this plan being considered by the Department of the Interior, headed by North Dakota’ s Doug Burgum, point to an existing maintenance plan, funded to the tune of $ 1.9 billion annually that’ s already in place to address a backlog of maintenance on federal lands.
On a small side note, since first enacted in 1964, the LWCF has been used to fund nearly 50,000 projects across the country, including everything from developing public picnic shelters and boat launches to supporting the addition of public grounds for hunting and other outdoor recreational activities. Pool renovations in Napoleon, North Dakota? Funded in part through the LWCF. Campground development at Grahams Island State Park on Devils Lake? $ 316,000 and change from the LWCF. Pelican Lake Recreation Area southwest of Watertown, South Dakota? LWCF. Same for parks in Sioux Falls, Harrisburg and Tea. One can literally find an LWCF-funded project in every county of every state in the U. S. A lot of good has come from those dollars.
And then there’ s the issue of duck and goose bands.
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A 2026 budget plan introduced by President Donald Trump effectively signs the death warrant for the Federal Bird Banding Laboratory, which keeps track of millions of small aluminum bands placed on the legs of ducks, geese and swans. The boots-on-theground work of capturing waterfowl and recording a bird’ s species, sex, and age is done by the U. S. Fish & Wildlife Service, its partner organizations and even volunteers, but the housing of that data and the monitoring of where and when a band is recovered is done at the Bird Banding Lab.
It’ s truly hard to overstate the importance of this information as it relates to the management of waterfowl
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across the continent-- a fact that some waterfowl hunters understand. For most hunters, however, bands are simply a really cool part of the hunting experience. Shooting a banded mallard or snow goose is akin to shooting a trophy whitetail buck, maybe even more so, because with that small aluminum band comes a bit of the backstory of the bird and where its wings have carried it since being captured.
My first band came by way of a drake mallard on a small cattail-choked marsh in Hamlin County. The morning was cold and windy, and grey skies were spitting snowflakes. It was a magical morning, made even more incredible by the
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discovery of a band resting on a big orange leg.
All of the bands hanging on my lanyard have a story. There’ s the goose band I found after dispatching a crippled Canada goose that crossed a gravel road in front of me while I was scouting. Two of my mallard bands came from drakes that were banded earlier in the fall in South Dakota and then just weeks after being captured were shot a hundred miles away or more in areas that had recently flooded. Those ducks know how to find new water, that’ s for sure. My favorite band? That might belong to the bird from Willow Lake. Arkansas, that is.
I made only one trip to blow in the World’ s
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