Pheasant habitat specialist goes to work on Yellowstone Valley public land

Robert C. Gibson

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BILLINGS — The Yellowstone Valley’s new upland game bird habitat specialist started work last month with plans to improve feeding, rearing and nesting places for upland game birds on public lands.

Dennis Yurian joined the Pheasants Forever team to fill a full-time habitat-improvement job jointly funded by the conservation organization, the federal Bureau of Land Management and Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

Yurian’s work will start on three pieces of public land. He spent this week mowing grass and weeds at the BLM’s Sundance Special Management Recreation Area southeast of Laurel along the Clarks Fork River. Later this fall he will work on the new FWP Yellowstone Wildlife Management Area east of Billings and at the BLM-managed Pompeys Pillar National Monument.

Jay Watson of Billings, the wildlife technician who oversees wildlife projects for FWP, said the first priority is to prepare at least 100 acres of land that will be planted next spring in winter food plots for upland game birds. Much of the land is irrigated, so it will support corn, millet, sorghum and similar cereal grains preferred by game birds.

Yurian said the weather will determine how much ground he can mow, plow and grade this fall in preparation for spring seeding.

Later plans at all three sites call for planting grasses and legumes to create dense nesting cover and creating moist areas that will grow insects to feed young pheasant broods in the spring. Yurian eventually may plant native shrubs such as snowberry, wild rose, buffalo berry, sagebrush and junipers to generally enhance the riparian areas for all species, Watson said.

All of the work is being done on public land and is designed to give the public more opportunities to see and hunt pheasants and other game birds, he said.

 

-FWP-