# I dont make this stuff up, I do read



## water_swater (Sep 19, 2006)

your damn right I'm stirring the pot, if you dont the tops gonna get crusty and its gonna start to stink. I have lived in WI, I know how people in that region think, we have a completely different viewpoint of sloughs. ND see wetlands as an eyesore and a pain in the *** to run a 60' cultivator around. WI see wetlands as the ultimate defintion of natural diversity, they understand the biology behind wetlands. However, we arent talking about draining permanent wetlands, MOST farmers now are too busy combining soybeans, corn, and cultivating to worry about draining sloughs, it has been wet so long many farmers realize its most often a lost cause as well as illegal. This sloughs I am talking about are sloughs that have been apprearing and dissapearing every year or every few depending on snowfall ect. When wetlands dissapear in most other regions it is because of intense draining and pumping which is also the case in some places of ND, but those drains have been built many years ago and have been part of the landscape now for 20 years, ND has since proven it can still produce ducks. DU leads many to believe that ND is endangered, and while parts of it may be the Devils Lake region is far from the Missouri Coteau region.

http://www.ducks.org/DU_Magazine/DUMagazineMayJune2001/2073/UnderstandingWaterfowl.html

fwp.mt.gov/mtoutdoors/HTML/articles/2005/RightRain.htm

This talks about the importance of temporary nesting sloughs, it does refrain on the cultivating of sloughs, but the only sloughs that are beneficial are the sloughs that have open water on the top the provide insects and things for birds to eat. I have never seen a duck in the spring in an overgrown slough thats cattails all the way accross it has to have open water in it. Very, very few of those sloughs are dry in the Devils Lake region, it is mainly the sloughs that are overgrown.


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## Plainsman (Jul 30, 2003)

With the high water that has persisted since 1993 there are very few wetlands with extensive stands of cattail. They will only take about three feet of water, then they drown out. Many of the wetlands from Bismarck to Fargo have very few cattails. Wetlands around Devils Lake (my home area) have also been drown, but to a lesser extent. Most have been drained. Now they want to pump their problem downstream on top of Valley City and Fargo. 
As there are few cattails there really is no need to talk about disking them. However, wetlands are still being disked, cattails or no cattails. Don't base the wetland disking issue simply on cattails.
I was in the Devils Lake area last week-end, and many of the wetlands are dry. Those dry wetlands are a narrow band of cattail around the edge, and a big dry basin in the middle. Wetlands on my brother-in- laws farm are all dry. My brothers wetlands are dry. Most of the wetlands on my cousins farm are dry. Who told you wetlands around Devils Lake were not dry?


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## water_swater (Sep 19, 2006)

yea its been dry, but last year we had 20" of rain, two extremes p.s. I tried to reply to the above topic but I dont know why it gave me a whole topic, bottom line we need snow


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## KYUSS (Aug 27, 2005)

water_swater said:


> ND see wetlands as an eyesore and a pain in the a$$ to run a 60' cultivator around.


We do? Wow! Thanks water_swater for telling us ND's how we think. I dont know what we would do with out ya! uke:


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## Plainsman (Jul 30, 2003)

Twenty inches isn't bad. Western North Dakota averages some where around 13 inches, Jamestown about 17 inches (likewise Devils Lake) and the Red River Valley gets about 19 or 20. Here in the Great Plains we are in a moisture deficit area. We have more evaporation than precipitation. That may sound impossible, but much of it runs into wetlands so is contained on less than 10 percent of the land, and much of it goes from the wetland into the aquifer. Most of it doesn't stay on the surface and wait to evaporate.


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