Conservation partners in North Dakota and Minnesota have come together to work on a large landscape-level project in the heart of the Prairie Pothole Region of North Dakota and northwest Minnesota. The Glaciated Wetland and Prairies project area is a very unique landscape containing some of the most numerous, productive and diverse wetland communities in the world. These wetland habitats and surrounding native prairie provide nesting, brood-rearing, loafing and foraging habitats for waterfowl, shorebirds, wading birds, gulls, raptors and grassland birds along with providing habitat for many mammals, amphibians and aquatic insects.
These wetlands are being threatened by surface and pattern tile drainage by agriculture, along with the conversion of native prairies to cropland. The project will protect 7,949 acres of wetlands and 29,103 acres of native grasslands. This will be accomplished by the fee-title donation of 2,886 acres of wetlands and 3,685 acres of upland by The Nature Conservancy to Glacial Ridge National Wildlife Refuge and the acquisition of 5,063 acres of wetland easements and 25,418 acres grassland easements by Ducks Unlimited and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The North American Wetlands Conservation Act has provided $6 million in support through five grant phases, while the partners have provided over $6.3 million in matching funds.
Partners include: Ducks Unlimited, The Nature Conservancy, Remington Outdoors Foundation, John Childs, James Kennedy, Turner Foundation, Skipper Dickson, Grohne Family Foundation, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.