(Spirit Lake)– The Iowa Department of Natural Resources will be doing some aerial spraying of some local wildlife management areas beginning next week and continuing into early September.
Locally, the spraying will be done at Santee Prairie, Cayler Prairie, Garlock Slough, Spring Run Southeast, Spring Run main, Spring Run northeast, Christopherson Slough West and east and Hales Slough.
Ryan Harr of the DNR’s Wildlife Bureau tells KUOO news the aerial spraying plays an important role in maintaining those areas…
“We are trying to control invasive cottonwood, willow, on a lot of our wildlife areas, especially over drainage tile lines and stuff like that. Those things can plug tiles and we need to maintain drainage for neighboring farm land and stuff like that, as well as keep our grasslands open for pheasant and waterfowl hunters so they don’t get invaded with trees and so forth, so using the helicopter, aerial spraying, it’s just a far more efficient tool than our crews can actually do, get out and do like on a tractor and so forth, so.”
Harr says the spraying will be done August 26th through September 4th and that the areas will be temporarily closed while it’s going on…
“We will close them for about 24 hours when we have the plane in there, or the helicopter in there, just for safety sake for the label of the chemical and stuff like that. We will post the areas for 10 days two weeks prior to the actual spraying so that the public knows that they’re going to be closed for a day. Then on the actual day of the spraying that wildlife area will be closed a day, just a day, and we’ll actually have some DNR staff out there to make sure people don’t enter and stuff like that.”
Harr says this marks the third year for the project.
