Nebraskaland

NEBRASKAland November 2016

NEBRASKAland Magazine is dedicated to outstanding photography and informative writing with an engaging mix of articles and photos highlighting Nebraska’s outdoor activities, parklands, wildlife, history and people.

Issue link: http://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/736554

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34 NEBRASKAland • NOVEMBER 2016 34 NEBRASKAland • NOVEMBER 2016 create and improve habitat. But to truly build the population, this has to occur on the landscape scale. With the Berggren Plan, we'll be ramping up our efforts to impact more acres – at least in targeted areas of the state. But realistically we can't do all this alone. We'll need to continue working cooperatively with new and existing partners to deliver habitat, influence Farm Bill policy and secure additional conservation funding. The biggest challenge I see is that we are working in an agricultural landscape that is always changing. There will always be pressure to make farming more and more efficient, and historically, this has not been good for pheasants. At the same time, changes can also lead to opportunities. We'll need to think of innovative ways to create more habitat in targeted areas and incorporate wildlife benefits into these changing agricultural systems. For example, cover crops are trending right now and represent an opportunity to create pheasant habitat along with all the other agronomic benefits. I think we're continuing on our upswing from the 2012 drought. We saw a pretty big increase in hunter harvest last year and hope to see the same again this year. We had a pretty mild winter throughout most of the state, so we carried a pretty good breeding population into the The pheasant population is continuing its upswing from the 2012 drought, with numbers expected to be similar to last season. Q: What do you think is the state of Nebraska's pheasant population as well as hunting opportunities?

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