Water Control, #47-31P

When the first settlers reached Minnesota's western prairies, they found a landscape without trees. Today, many conservation lands have high densities of trees. Some of these trees were planted, while others have taken advantage of the wet cycle Minnesota has been in since the 1990s. Ideally, we control trees with fire. However, many of these trees are growing in wet areas that never burn or have become so dense that they have eliminated fuels below them and are virtually fireproof. The goal is to use fire for long-term maintenance after this initial treatment. Trees provide perches for predatory birds and dens for mammals, and obstruct the horizon which inhibits many grassland birds from nesting near trees. Trees are detrimental to the waterfowl, gamebirds, and songbirds that require grassland and prairie habitat. Our goal with this project is to remove trees from public lands in an effort to increase the habitat quality for all the bird species that nest in grasslands.