2011

Mingo National Wildlife Refuge is developing a hunting plan and wants your input.

If you’ve being keeping up with the blog, we’ve mentioned flooding Pool 8 in November a couple of times. The decision to flood has been delayed, and we wanted to pass this along to keep you informed.

In the last month we collected data in the timber at Duck Creek, Mingo and a few of our other forested conservation areas in Southeast Missouri. While I was out there, I saw something that caught my eye.

I realize folks will be checking in as we get closer to waterfowl season. I thought I'd try something new in attempt to bring everyone up to speed.

It is that time of year again. Let's see how nutty things are at Duck Creek.

I mentioned last month that the Duck Creek renovation has been reminding me of renovating a house. House improvement projects, at least in my experience, don’t always go as quickly or as smoothly as planned. Progress occurs, but the completion of the work doesn’t always happen when you had originally intended.

This year we have continued to trap and band wood ducks at Duck Creek to help with efforts to monitor the breeding population of wood ducks on our managed wetland areas.

It is getting close to fall, and folks are looking forward to waterfowl season. Here is Duck Creek’s outlook for the 2011-2012 season based on the current rate of construction and water levels in Pool 1.

We are having a fish salvage between now and Aug. 15 at the five fish ponds on the east side of Duck Creek, approximately 0.7 mile south of the main Duck Creek entrance along Highway 51. These ponds will be drained shortly, and we would like to maximize the public use of this resource.

If you’re traveling over this holiday weekend and are heading towards Duck Creek with intentions to fish Pool 1 and enjoy the area, we’d love to have you. We are in the middle of some construction work on the bridge that crosses from Pool 2 to Pool 1 and are currently re-routing traffic around the main entrance road.

You could say last month was a little slow in regards to renovation activities. However, with the water going down (see pictures) and a few other items moving forward, we’ve shifted gears and are moving forward full speed ahead.

I’ve discussed before that one of our Duck Creek renovation goals is to reconnect historic drainages when possible. During flood events several spillways and low water crossings will help facilitate this. Well, in the last month Mother Nature reconnected the whole basin, spillways or not, during this historic flood event. Over the last two weeks we’ve gone out and have taken a look to see what kind of critters are out and about and utilizing these connected habitats.

The weather patterns aren’t the only things that have been active during this past month. Hopefully, you’ve been able to get out in between the rain events to take advantage of mushrooms, turkeys and fish. Along with the bounty of spring, we’ve been quite busy with renovation activities.

As I drove around Duck Creek last week I was excited about spring migration and this summer’s renovation to Units A and B. In different parts of the area I observed a variety of species keying in on different water conditions as we begin to draw down the area.

It is officially spring, and you can definitely tell if you have been out to Duck Creek recently. The wildlife are moving about, and so has Little River Drainage District.

A lot of species travel considerable distances. This winter Mallards and Mountain Lions have been in the spotlight. As temperatures warm up other critters will also be moving around to take advantage of wetland habitats.

I just wanted to check in with folks and lay out what we can expect in the next year. I also wanted to address some common questions that we get about different parts of Duck Creek.