Our Receding Wetlands
Conservation Groups Work Together
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More and more wetlands across South Carolina are being restored and enhanced because of conservation groups such as NRCS and the partnerships that they form with other groups to accomplish their goals. Recently, SCWA and NRCS have joined SCWA’s Wood Duck Production Project and NRCS’ Wetland Reserve Program in a partnership to broaden and quicken their goals to restore as many wetlands as possible each year.
SCWA Waterfowl Biologist feel that the partnership will be a great success, “With the demand for hard timber fiber increasing, there is less and less natural habitat available for breeding wood ducks. Whereas wetlands many years ago were drained for agricultural purposes, the NRCS provides a service to the landowners to re-establish these once existing wetlands. Such reestablished wetlands are excellent sites for the Wood Duck Production Project, because they provide food sources as well as good brood rearing habitat. Wood duck nesting units installed on these sites not only provide the hens with quality nesting cavities, but also several other species of cavity nesting birds such as Carolina wrens, warblers, great crested flycatchers, eastern bluebirds, and hooded mergansers.”
This partnership began this spring of 2003 with several projects in Bamberg and Dillon Counties. Some of the projects consisted of removing drainage tiles that were installed years ago to drain low water pockets in fields. Other projects received a more advanced restoration that included dikes with water control structures used for planting food for waterfowl to be flooded in the winter. All of the projects received a suitable number of nest boxes according to acreage and density of plant growth.
In the past ten years the Wetland Reserve Program has become the most popular and ecologically successful voluntary incentive-based wetland restoration program in U.S. history. The funding for this program is made available by the Commodity Credit Corporation and then implemented by NRCS.
NRCS provides financial assistance for landowners in the form of easement payments and restoration cost-share assistance. The lands that are enrolled mostly consist of floodprone restorable agricultural wetlands. However, many types of drained or altered swamps have been enrolled in WRP. If a landowner wishes to participate in some kind of wetland restoration project, he/she should call their local USDA/NRCS office and ask about the Wetland Reserve Program. The landowner would then receive a questionnaire referring to certain aspects of their land. Then, upon approval (based on land value), which will be determined through NRCS, the project is underway.
A SCWA Waterfowl Biologist and Neal Rodgers (Landowner recently involved in the NRCS’ WRP Program and SCWA’s Wood Duck Production Project) leaned against one of SCWA’s work trucks and gazed over Rodgers’ new dikes and water control structures. Both men had sweat-burning eyes and mud smeared clothes as they viewed Rodgers’ brand new wood duck nest boxes that they had just finished installing. The nest boxes were installed on Rodgers’ WRP property that borders a muddy bend in the Pee Dee River. The men were tired and happy as they pictured sharp white herons trading sides of the soon-to-be swamp, floating grass with a bass steadying himself for the shine of a minnow, the lapping sound of dark water around a maze of wide bottomed trees, and the little wood duck ducklings peeping out of nest box holes-then hopping out in a ball of golden fluff.
NRCS/SCWA Projects-
2003 Installations to Date
County Name # of boxes
Bamberg Merl Diem 5
Bamberg W.B Gillam 4
Dillon Neal Rogers 8
Dillon Dr. Paul Frill 6
If you have an area that you think may support wood ducks and would like to learn more about obtaining wood duck nesting structures, please call SCWA Waterfowl Biologist Stuart Cochran at (803-452-6001 ext 103). If you are not already a cooperator of the Wood Duck Production Project, please call to find out more about becoming involved with the largest wood duck project in the nation or visit the SCWA website @ www.scwa.org.
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