• Enhance and protect 9-square-mile habitat complexes where the landscape will be boosted to 40 percent permanent nesting cover because large blocks of habitat increase reproductive success.
• Increase enrollment of permanent conservation easements and nonpermanent conservation programs by private landowners.
• Increase education and marketing of state and federal conservation programs to landowners through the Farm Bill Assistance Partnership.
• Accelerate acquisition of public hunting lands in the pheasant region. That will increase habitat and create more hunting opportunities.
• Improve existing wildlife habitat on private and public lands with prescribed burns, tree removal, conservation grazing and haying.
• Launch a comprehensive buffer program along waterways — which will happen under a law pushed for and signed by Gov. Mark Dayton. Fifty-foot buffers must be installed on public waters by late 2017 and 16 ½-foot buffers on public ditches by late 2018. The buffers should help water quality but also boost wildlife habitat.
• Optimize pheasant habitat on roadsides.
• Secure federal funding to sustain or expand the state's fledgling walk-in access program in the pheasant region, which pays landowners to allow public access. Last year, hunters could access 21,000 acres across 35 counties.
