Ducks Unlimited is using seed contributed by a group of conservation partners to restore habitat in Nebraska. Local employees of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and partners in the Rainwater Basin Joint Venture met at Cottonwood Waterfowl Production Area in Phelps County for a pre-Thanksgiving tradition recently for their annual “seed-bagging day.”

Wearing dust masks and wielding plastic scoop shovels, workers attacked a ten-foot-tall heap of native plant seed, mixing and bagging approximately 8 ½ tons in four hours. That’s enough, says USFWS’s Brad Krohn, to plant 1000-1500 acres of prairie and wetland restorations. The high-diversity seed mix contains native grass seed – including big bluestem, little bluestem, Indian grass, and Canada wild rye – collected from the Waterfowl Production Areas managed by the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Rainwater Basin Wetland Management District, located in Kearney. The mix also includes native forb, or broad-leaf, seeds – such as purple prairie clover, black-eyed Susan, New England aster, and two species of penstemon – contributed by The Nature Conservancy and Prairie Plains Resource Institute, both based in Aurora.

Steve Donovan, Manager of Conservation Programs for DU in Nebraska, says DU has used the contributed seed to restore former cropland to waterfowl habitat at the Verona Complex in Clay County, and that several additional sites will benefit this year. “Native seed is very expensive,” Donovan says, “and it helps tremendously to have a source like this.”

The Fish and Wildlife Service not only uses the seed mix on Waterfowl Production Areas in south-central Nebraska, but also distributes bags free of charge to nearby National Wildlife Refuges and to other organizations engaged in habitat restoration. “We try to work with all organizations that are in need of native seed, from small acreages, all the way up to Ducks Unlimited,” said Krohn, who coordinates the seed program.