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RACHEL REABE: MPR's Mainstreet Radio coverage of rural issues is supported by the Blandin Foundation, committed to strengthening communities through grant-making, leadership training, and convening. We invite you to visit the Mainstreet website. Go to www.mpr.org where you can hear today's program at your convenience, as well as other Mainstreet reports. The address, again is www.mpr.org.

[COUNTRY MUSIC]

Good morning and welcome to a special Mainstreet Radio show on wetlands and waterfowl. I'm Rachel Reabe. We're broadcasting today from the Prairie Wetlands Learning Center in Fergus Falls. This is the prairie pothole region of Minnesota, a blend of grasses and wetlands that provide a rich breeding ground for waterfowl.

Almost all of Minnesota's native prairie has been destroyed, along with 80% of the wetlands plowed over and filled in, turned into farmland or towns. In the past 30 years, there's been an effort to protect what wetlands are left and restore others. Tim Bodeen, the director of the Prairie Wetlands Learning Center, is with me this morning. Good morning, Tim.

TIM BODEEN: Good morning, Rachel.

RACHEL REABE: And we have a beautiful day for this show set the scene for our listeners.

TIM BODEEN: Well, we have beautiful blue skies with a few clouds rolling past. And in the distance, you see the rust color of the native prairie grasses blowing in the wind with a beautiful wetland right next to the building here with the cattails waving in the wind and some ducks and geese in the air.

RACHEL REABE: This is a big place this time of year because of all the ducks that are migrating overhead. We have a microphone outside, so when you hear those bird sounds, you'll know that we're just picking up what's here.

TIM BODEEN: Correct. We have a lot of songbirds coming through right now heading south. And we also have a lot of waterfowl moving down from the north here again. So during our broadcast, we'll see many ducks and geese flying overhead.

RACHEL REABE: How much land do you have here at Prairie Learning Center?

TIM BODEEN: We have 325 acres.

RACHEL REABE: And is it a mixture of prairie and wetlands?

TIM BODEEN: Yes, it is. On 325 acres, we have approximately 38 wetlands. And the remaining uplands have all been restored to native tallgrass prairie.

RACHEL REABE: This is a very unique environmental learning center on a number of different fronts.

TIM BODEEN: Right. And as far as Minnesota goes, it's the first that deals with wetlands and prairie in Minnesota. And then on the US Fish and Wildlife Service end of it, it's the first in the nation actually to have a residential center for the Fish and Wildlife Service.

RACHEL REABE: So the residential component means that you will have students that will come and stay here.

TIM BODEEN: Correct. We have capacity for about 96 students. We have 12 dorm rooms with eight kids to a room. And they will come typically for a 2 and 1/2 day to-- 2 and 1/2 day stay to learn about prairies and wetlands.

RACHEL REABE: Now, in Minnesota, when we talk about environmental learning centers, our mind goes instantly to the forest and to the trees of northern Minnesota because that's where a lot of our learning centers are. This is a whole different habitat here.

TIM BODEEN: Yeah, we are truly unique in the fact that we are in a pretty much a prairie region where trees are very few and far between, where we're trying to restore the habitat here to what it looked like before settlement, which was particularly treeless. And so when the students come, it's very open, it's very wide. And they do have-- because it seems like our culture here likes to vacation in the trees and not come out to the wide, open spaces.

RACHEL REABE: Is prairie and wetlands' appreciation-- is that an acquired taste?

TIM BODEEN: Very much so. Walking through the prairie for a novice can be very frustrating because it looks like miles and miles of grass, and they all look the same. But if you can take time and learn what's out there, it's truly an amazing ecosystem with over 300 plants and many species attached to it. And then underground, there's billions of bacteria and fungus going on to enhance the prairie.

RACHEL REABE: And so some of what we see here was here originally when you got the land, and some of it you have worked on.

TIM BODEEN: Right. We have 16 acres of native prairie here. We have two-- basically, it's broken up into two small pieces, about a 15-acre piece on the south end of us. And we have a small 1-acre piece that's on a slope going into a wetland. And then the remaining acres have all been restored back to prairie grasses that we've harvested-- Fish and Wildlife Service's harvested locally off prairies and West Ottertail County and in Wilkin County.

RACHEL REABE: If people haven't heard of the Prairie Wetlands Learning Center, it wouldn't be surprising because you've really just opened up.

TIM BODEEN: Yeah, in fact, we opened our doors in August 8. We had a grand opening ceremony. And we have-- we're basically a brand new kid on the block.

RACHEL REABE: 7,000 schoolchildren are going to come through this property in the next year. What are you hoping that they learn?

TIM BODEEN: Our hope is that they carry away an appreciation for wetlands and prairie, that through our educational programs here, we can create an awareness within them about the values of prairies and wetlands, and their awareness will lead them someday to good environmental decisions for the landscape.

RACHEL REABE: And is that a big jump for kids? Even kids from Fergus Falls, this is the terrain that they've grown up with. Do they know a lot about it?

TIM BODEEN: No. And that's-- when it's in your backyard, you don't pay much attention to it. And what happens now with these kids come out. And they learn to appreciate it. They investigate it. They experience it. And we've created hundreds of junior prairie biologists out here, wetland biologists, because of our working with the children out here.

RACHEL REABE: But it's not just for schoolchildren.

TIM BODEEN: No. We cater to three groups, actually. Our new visitor center will have exhibitry that will cater to adult visitors, a trail system for walking for anybody to come out and experience the site, as well as environmental education programs for schoolchildren, summer camps, overnight stays for the dormitory kids. So basically, we're taking the whole community.

RACHEL REABE: And how has it gone over so far?

TIM BODEEN: It's been wonderful. We have been basically going through-- since our grand opening in August, since school started, we go through about 500 kids a week, which is incredible. And then on top of that, we have approximately 200 visitors that come through here in a week just to walk the trails, look at the new building and stuff like that.

RACHEL REABE: And are they mostly local Fergus Falls people?

TIM BODEEN: We have had local. But we had a tremendous article written by the Star Tribune on the center, and that has brought us many Twin City visitors, which has been wonderful.

RACHEL REABE: So this is a new setting to them as well.

TIM BODEEN: Exactly. And they have really appreciated. They love to come out here, walk the trails. They have lots of questions about what they're seeing. What kind of animals are here? How do we restore things? How do we restore wetlands? How do we restore prairie? So they have lots of good questions.

RACHEL REABE: When the school kids come out here, there are a number of different lessons that their teachers are trying to teach them. What are some of them? What are some of the things you're teaching kids from here?

TIM BODEEN: Well, basically, our landscape drives what we're trying to teach. So we look at prairies and wetlands that can lead into history ideas. It can lead into communication. But a lot of it is science driven. We learn about what different prairie species are as far as plants, what lives in a wetland, what do young ducks eat? All those kinds of questions are answered.

RACHEL REABE: And you have a classroom setting here as well as out in the field.

TIM BODEEN: Right. We do have a classroom so that they can do some of their work outside, but yet bring their stuff inside to finish up. And maybe if they look-- if they have to use a microscope, or that they can come inside the building and finish that part of their project.

RACHEL REABE: We talked about in our opening that 30 years ago, wetlands were just something to be filled up. This center would never have happened then.

TIM BODEEN: Probably not. But there's been-- within the Fergus Falls community, there's been some great forward-thinking people who saw the value of wetlands for many different reasons and have worked hard to educate the public locally here about how important wetlands are to us, not only agriculturally, but maybe culturally, aesthetically, hunting-wise, whatever.

RACHEL REABE: Our phone lines are open for you to join in with your calls today. Our number here is 1-800-537-5252. If you have a question or a comment, join our show today. A group of sixth grade science students from Fergus Falls Middle School is out in the field at the Prairie Wetlands Learning Center today. Mainstreet Radio's Dan Gunderson is with them and their teacher. Good morning, Dan. Tell us what your group is up to.

DAN GUNDERSON: Good morning, Rachel. We're standing on a floating bridge in the midst of a small marsh here surrounded by rushes and cattails.

SPEAKER 1: He wants to--

DAN GUNDERSON: 22 students out here, and they're all collecting invertebrates this morning with small nests and dipping in the water. I'm joined by Paula Grotalis. She's their teacher at the Fergus Falls Middle School. Paula, tell me, what is the value of bringing the students out here in the middle of a marsh collecting invertebrates?

PAULA GROTALIS: Well, for one thing, I don't have any windows in my classroom. And this is just a beautiful view of the surrounding area and the outdoors. And I think the students would agree that learning about microorganisms in class is not quite as much fun as learning about microorganisms on site. And we're having a great time here on the dock. Kids are finding all sorts of macroinvertebrates as well as microorganisms. And we're going to study them today.

DAN GUNDERSON: How does the learning experience differ when you're out here. Do kids learn more? Do they retain more from this experience than they would in the classroom studying the same subject?

PAULA GROTALIS: Oh yeah. I'd like to say that they're on task the whole time in the classroom, but that's probably would be a little bit different than the truth. They are on task. And if you look down this dock, every single one of the students has a jar that they're collecting samples that they're going to study. And then they have a net. And every one of them is on task. So it's a lot easier for all of us to be out on a place like this

DAN GUNDERSON: How often do your kids come out to this site?

PAULA GROTALIS: We try to get them here three or four times during the school year. Normally, we brought our whole team. We have 75 students in our team. And this year, we're going to try something a little different and bring each class by themselves so they have a more intense experience with a fewer number of people.

DAN GUNDERSON: I'm trying to check and see what some of the students are doing here. Now, they're looking for microorganisms with these nets.

PAULA GROTALIS: Correct. We've been studying microorganisms for three kingdoms besides plants and animals. So this is just a perfect experience, a hands-on experience, where they get to [INAUDIBLE] see microorganisms not in a lab, but in real-life settings. So that's what they're doing. They're trying to find these microorganisms. So we're going to put them under the microscope. And we're going to count populations, and adaptations, and diversity of these living organisms.

DAN GUNDERSON: All right, let's see what these guys are coming up with. There's a couple of students. What have you guys found here?

SPEAKER 2: We found beetles, shrimps.

DAN GUNDERSON: How about you? What did you find? What have you got in your net there?

SPEAKER 3: Nothing but shrimp.

DAN GUNDERSON: What do you think of coming out here? Is this a lot of fun? More fun than being in the classroom, no doubt?

SPEAKER 4: Yeah.

DAN GUNDERSON: What kind of things have you learned coming out to the marsh?

SPEAKER 5: I don't know. It's easier to learn, well, like up out here because we're not here knowing that stuff instead of just studying it. So you can look at the animals and study them instead of just out of a book.

SPEAKER 6: Let me get a water.

DAN GUNDERSON: All right, Rachel, it's a beautiful day to be out here in the marsh. And these students are having a great time and apparently learning something as well.

RACHEL REABE: Thank you so much, Dan. Our phone lines are open for your questions and comments. Our show today on wetlands and waterfowl. You can call 1-800-537-5252 to join our conversation. Good morning. Dave from Mankato is on the line with us today.

DAVE: Hello.

RACHEL REABE: Good morning, Dave.

DAVE: I'm in here. Good morning. Do you hear me?

RACHEL REABE: Yes, go ahead with your question.

DAVE: OK, yeah, surely. I just wanted to check to see whether or not the facilities were available for seniors-- and I mean seniors at the other end of the spectrum in high school-- understanding that there's spartan kinds of facilities, but could, for instance, a group of seniors come in for two or three days and do the same process.

RACHEL REABE: Let's talk about that, Tim. Has there been any thought to-- I know in some of your literature, you talked about learning experience from pre-kindergarten to PhD. So you've obviously got a wide variety of curriculum that can be taught here. Are there any plans yet for classes for older adults?

TIM BODEEN: Yeah, there is, actually. We are looking at lots of different options of people coming in here. And that's actually one of the most popular questions is, what are we doing for the older people? Are we going to have elder hostels, or even, like Dave's ideas, actually bringing them in a-- run them through the same system that we run the kids through? And that's a very-- that's a very good thing we should start looking at for that group of people.

RACHEL REABE: Is that something you'd be interested in, Dave?

DAVE: Yeah, and not only that. I think I had the group that might be interested in it. How do I pursue it?

TIM BODEEN: Well, Dave, you can contact us at-- we're at area code-- 218-736-0938 is our number here. And you can contact us, and we can talk about it and look at possibilities.

RACHEL REABE: And, Dave, I've been to that dormitory. It's not that spartan. You would love it here.

DAVE: All right. I'm sure. I've been in more spartan ones. I'm certain.

RACHEL REABE: Thank you. We're continuing with our show today. And Tim Bodeen, director of the Prairie Wetlands Learning Center-- he's my guest. We've been joined by Kevin Brennan with the US Fish and Wildlife Service in the Fergus area. We're also being joined by Dr. Jay Leitch, an economist at North Dakota State University, who's in our St. Paul studio. Good morning, gentlemen.

KEVIN BRENNAN: Good morning, Rachel.

RACHEL REABE: Much effort has been devoted in recent years to preserving and restoring wetlands. Mr. Brennan, why are they so valuable from your point of view?

KEVIN BRENNAN: Well, working for the Fish and Wildlife Service, the value of wetlands for us is in wildlife and specifically waterfowl. Here in the prairie pothole region, the wetlands provide breeding habitat for just a myriad of ducks and geese, and so that's why the service has an interest. I think for the general public, the interest reaches beyond wildlife and waterfowl and goes into areas such as groundwater recharge.

Wetlands do provide that benefit for everyone, flood control. Wetlands do store water. And during flood events, they retain the water. They also increase the quality of the water that we drink, either in out of our streams or even the groundwater. So there are benefits outside of waterfowl.

RACHEL REABE: And are these benefits that we have just come to appreciate over the last 30 years?

KEVIN BRENNAN: Well, it has been a gradual process. I think the economy of this part of the world is driven by agriculture. But as we have more people moving to this part of the world, we find that-- yeah, we do recognize these other benefits. I think also we're finding this out. We're finding out what wetlands values are, what the functions they serve out there in the landscape. We've learned this as time goes. Yes.

RACHEL REABE: Dr. Leitch is an economist. What's your opinion?

JAY LEITCH: Good morning, Rachel. I believe that wetlands certainly have value. And much of what I've written and much of my career in the last 20-plus years has been devoted to better understanding of the value of wetlands.

The question I have is that there are many other components of the landscape and many other uses of resources that society can make that also have value. So we can't stop the discussion by saying wetlands have value. The question then becomes, how much value do they have compared to other uses of the resources? And which one should we use and which should we develop for society?

RACHEL REABE: Are you concerned that the pendulum has swung too far?

JAY LEITCH: Yes, I think it has. I think there's a tremendous bandwagon that has swung toward wetlands are infinitely valuable. And they all ought to be preserved, and we ought to restore many of those that have been drained or converted to other uses. And until we know more about the values of wetlands, again, compared to other uses of society's resources, I think it's premature to say we ought to start restoring more of what we have converted.

RACHEL REABE: Tim Bodeen, you're in the education business. How do you respond to that?

TIM BODEEN: Well, I think I look at it from Kevin's perspective pretty much. I look through the Fish and Wildlife Service's eyes, and that wetlands are so important for our migratory waterfowl and also other migratory birds that use wetlands also. And I look at some of the species that are declining because of these habitats that are disappearing. And that's where my feelings come from is. We need to save some of these habitats to preserve the wildlife that needs them.

RACHEL REABE: Our phone number this morning is 1-800-537-5252. You can call us at that number, 1-800-537-5252, and join the conversation. We have Troy on the phone with us from Vining. Good morning, Troy.

TROY: Good morning. I don't have a question, but I'd just like to add that I've been working with the US Fish and Wildlife for the past three years and restore wetlands on my rangeland, and it's been working very well. It holds water in the spring, provides nesting habitat throughout the nesting season. And like in the past two summers, has been very dry. Later on the season, it usually dries up and provides extra grass actually for the range cattle.

RACHEL REABE: And so it's been a system that's worked quite well. You haven't taken away anything from the value of your rangeland, you don't think.

TROY: No, in fact, it's added to it because usually in the spring, you have ample grass. And as the summer grows on, when it gets drier, the grass [INAUDIBLE]. And that's where the grass grows really well in these protected waterways. And there you have grass for later in the summer.

RACHEL REABE: And, Troy, if the US Fish and Wildlife had not come in and offered the assistance, would you have gone ahead and done it yourself? Or was it really dependent on their involvement?

TROY: Probably not. I do enjoy the wetlands, but to go ahead and add the cost of restructuring this and setting land aside for it, I probably wouldn't have done it. But it's been a great benefit for the wildlife in our area.

RACHEL REABE: Thank you for your call this morning. We're going now over to Brainerd, where Mary is on the phone with us. Good morning, Mary.

MARY: Yes?

RACHEL REABE: Go ahead with your question, Mary.

MARY: Yes. I'm on my way up to Brainerd from the Twin Cities. And I have probably a naive question about how you define or how you find out something is a native prairie grass. Is it through studying former land use or land use maps? Or is there a scientific determination of native prairie grasses as against other kinds of prairie grasses?

RACHEL REABE: That's a good question. Kevin, how do we know what was original and what wasn't?

KEVIN BRENNAN: Native prairie is very unique. And in all honesty, Mary, it almost takes a biologist to go out and look at a parcel of property and examine the species composition out there to determine whether it's truly native, never been broken by a plow or a disk, or if it's not.

And there are certain species of plants and insects that just simply will not survive in ground that's been cultivated even one or two years. And so a good plant biologist or a plant biologist normally can look at a parcel of property, especially during June of the year and look at it to see is this native prairie, it isn't.

Now, you also asked what is a native plant. And there are many plant species that are truly native to this area that have been harvested and seeded on other locations. And that's some of what we've done here at the learning center is to reseed the area to many of the native plants. But you truly cannot replicate native prairie unbroken sod that-- to this date, we haven't been able to do that.

RACHEL REABE: Tim, if we were to walk out on the property here, and you have acres and acres of prairie but only 18 acres of original prairie, would we be able to tell the difference looking at it?

TIM BODEEN: Yeah, definitely. You'd definitely get a different species composition. You'll find things like lead plant which disappears quickly after cultivation. And like the purple coneflower, which everybody's familiar with, that's one another species that through cultivation, it's got these long, beautiful taproots that once they're cut off, that's it. So they disappear quite quickly. So there's certain indicator species that we look at when we look at a piece of property. So you can definitely tell the difference here when you look at the two pieces.

RACHEL REABE: We have a question from White Bear Lake. Michael is on the phone with us this morning. Good morning, Michael.

MICHAEL: Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking my call. I have two points to make about the destruction of wetlands. I'm an activist with the Izaak Walton League, and I would like your guests to address the effect of wetland restoration on the flood in Grand Forks a couple of years ago. And the hand on slough held back an awful lot of water during that event.

And I would also like to point out to the gentleman and have him comment on the fact that wetland destruction in the western part of our state has led to a tremendous expanse of agriculture. And they're having a problem getting a price mainly because of overproduction. Perhaps if we restored some of these wetlands, our farmers would be able to get a decent price for their crops. And I'll hang up and listen to the comments. Thank you very much.

RACHEL REABE: Thank you for your question. The first question, Kevin, let's have you start with, and that is, what part do wetlands play or what part did they play in the big flood here?

KEVIN BRENNAN: Well, in the 1997 flood, we're looking at-- and I'm not a hydrologist, Rachel, but it was a major event. I mean, I've heard the figure thrown around 500-year event. And I have to be honest, I think that flood was going to happen no matter what. And that includes whether we restored all the wetlands or whether we had a lot of flood control structures. That was just simply so much water coming down the Red River Valley. It was going to be very difficult to stop the flood.

Now, how severe the flood would be? I don't know. That may be an unknown question. To the person in Grand Forks whose first floor was flooded by 1 inch of water, maybe some wetland restorations or water retention in the Red River basin would make a big difference because 1 inch of water-- that may have been possible to be held back.

RACHEL REABE: But do we have proven incidents where wetlands did help maybe not in that huge flood, but in other floods? Or is that just hypothetical?

KEVIN BRENNAN: There are specific examples, and we have them here in our wetland district where we have wetlands that have been restored on smaller watersheds where they have helped. And I've had farmers come to me and say, you basically saved us from getting more water this year because of your wetland restoration in that location. So it does happen. I think there needs to be more learned about it. That's probably the big issue here is we need to understand the role of wetlands more in providing flood control, just how important are they.

RACHEL REABE: Jay Leitch, your response to wetlands as a flood control mechanism.

JAY LEITCH: The reason, Rachel, I'm in St. Paul and not in Fergus is I'm a member of the International Joint Commission Task Force on the flood of '97. And that has received a lot of attention. Of course, the role of wetlands-- what we currently have a study underway at NDSU involving engineers and GIS experts looking at the role. And there's another study about to get underway by the USGS Fish and Wildlife and DNR to look at the role. So there's a lot of speculation out there.

My hypothesis-- and I think it's supported with some evidence-- is that during the spring of '97, the ground was saturated. Most wetlands were full following a very wet year. And a full wetland has no flood prevention possibilities. In fact, in-- I think it was 1826, there was a more severe flood than the flood of 1997. So wetlands would have had and did have very little impact on such a large flood. The smaller--

RACHEL REABE: Because when the cup is full, the cup is full.

JAY LEITCH: Yes. You may have seen me on TV a year ago pouring water into a full cup, and it just runs over.

RACHEL REABE: Let's move on to the second part of his question, which is if the wetlands are turned into farmland, now we have a farm economy where there's overproduction. Any comments on that, Dr. Leitch.

JAY LEITCH: Oh, I work with a bunch of ag economists. And I don't know-- certainly, any land you take out of production means maybe that much less fewer bushels of wheat produced. But I don't know if society wants to pay that much to take land out of production in the form of restoring wetlands. There are other ways to do it. CRP, for example, took several million acres of land out of production at a cost far less than the cost of restoring wetlands.

RACHEL REABE: You're listening to a special Mainstreet Radio broadcast from the Prairie Wetlands Learning Center in Fergus Falls. MPR's Mainstreet Radio coverage of rural issues is supported by the Blandin foundation, committed to strengthening communities through grant-making, leadership training, and convening.

[COUNTRY MUSIC]

Today's Minnesota weather forecast calls for skies to clear off across Minnesota. You can expect high temperatures in the 50s. Tonight, mostly clear skies with temperatures ranging from 35 to 45 degrees. And for tomorrow, partly to mostly sunny skies across Minnesota. Highs from the mid-50s in the northeast to the upper 60s in the southwest.

I'm Rachel Reabe. We're continuing our discussion on wetlands during this live broadcast from Fergus Falls. My guests are Jay Leitch, an economist with North Dakota State University. He's in our St. Paul studio. With us here in Fergus Falls is Kevin Brennan from the US Fish and Wildlife Service in Fergus Falls and Tim Bodeen with the Prairie Wetlands Learning Center. Our phone lines are open for your calls today. You can call us at 1-800-537-5252. Charles is on the phone with us from New London. Good morning, Charles.

CHARLES: Good morning. Thank you for taking my call. I never hear the hydrologic cycle as the fact that wetlands contribute to this hydrologic cycle as one of the main factors for conserving wetlands. It's my understanding that through transpiration and evaporation, an area such as wetlands, which have a good deal of plants, contribute more than open water to the hydrologic cycle. And I'd like to have that presented and possibly the opinion on that.

RACHEL REABE: Thank you for your question. Kevin Brennan, let's have you take a go at that.

KEVIN BRENNAN: Well, there's no question that all wetlands have plants. And they transpire in the-- water is put or vapor is put into the air. And of course, that creates rain. And I think the majority of our rains in this part of the region-- and I'm not a meteorologist, but I think the majority of the moisture comes from the Gulf of Mexico.

Nonetheless, I think when you talk hydrologic cycle, you're also talking about water that filters into the groundwater. And that's very important to us. I think a lot of us rural residents depend on our wells. And we use that for domestic use. And the water has to be there. I mean, we almost take it for granted. And that contribution of wetlands to the public in general, I think, is very important and is part of the hydrologic cycle.

RACHEL REABE: Jay Leitch, your comment.

JAY LEITCH: Well, I'm not a groundwater hydrologist either, but I think some early research by engineers has shown that there is more groundwater recharge from summer fallow or crop land, and there is from wetland. The reason it's a wetland is because the underlying soil is impervious. But we've got flow through and discharge in all different kinds of wetlands. So it's a very complicated story that I don't think can be answered simply especially by an economist.

RACHEL REABE: Dr. Leitch, I'm going to back you up just for one minute. You mentioned in the previous response-- you talked about CRP. Would you explain for our listeners what that is briefly?

JAY LEITCH: CRP is Conservation Reserve Program, which was initiated in about the middle '80s to take land that was highly erodible and put it into some form of permanent cover, vegetative cover for a 10-year period. Landowners were paid an annual amount about equivalent to what they would receive in rent from putting their land into CRP. And I don't remember the numbers, but in North Dakota there were about 2 million acres taken out of crop production and put into the Conservation Reserve Program.

RACHEL REABE: Thank you. We go now to Ely, Minnesota, where Joshua is standing by on the phone. Good morning, Joshua.

JOSHUA: Good morning. My dad just recently built a house. And instead of having a nice, green groomed lawn, he wanted to play around with some prairie grass restoration. Where can we get information about that?

TIM BODEEN: Oh, jeez. The sources for prairie restoration-- there's hundreds of different sources. You can go to two particular companies in Minnesota that I know of that work with this is one is called Prairie Restoration out of Princeton, Minnesota.

And then also the other one in Minnesota that I'm aware of is Prairie Moon, which is out of Houston, Minnesota down there. So contacting either of those guys, they can definitely help you out to tell you what you need to do for site preparation as well as seed that you want to put in the ground.

RACHEL REABE: Thanks so much for your question. We go to River Falls, Wisconsin, now. Bob is on the phone with us. Good morning, Bob.

BOB: Good morning. I was wondering if your guest could comment on how they may work into their interpretational programs, the prospects of climate change and global warming, which as I understand it, will be extending the prairie well into the forest areas of Minnesota and Wisconsin and likely have some drying effects on the potholes and the like that we are now accustomed to across the prairies. Thank you.

KEVIN BRENNAN: Here at the Prairie Wetlands Learning Center, we probably deal with more specific issues on the prairie landscape, specifically the wetlands and the plants. That's a real broad subject area. I will say this. The Fish and Wildlife Service and our sister agency, USGS, are doing studies on a much broader basis to look at some of the issues of global warming.

But here at the center, we would take the results of this research and obviously present it to the students or the general public coming through in a much more general way. But it's something, I think, that is being looked at more right now than we can really teach a lot about.

RACHEL REABE: Kevin Brennan, how many wetlands do we need? Do you have a mark on a wall someplace in your US Fish and Wildlife office that if we can get to here, we'll be satisfied?

KEVIN BRENNAN: Well, there are goals for wetland restoration as well as wetland protection in the prairie pothole region of the United States. And these have been set by the service to try and maintain the waterfowl populations that we are charged to take care of.

RACHEL REABE: Are we in good shape now, or are we way short?

KEVIN BRENNAN: Well, right now, I believe here in Minnesota, we have reached about 60% of the goal of the wetlands that the Fish and Wildlife Service wishes to protect. So we still have a ways to go. And I think you find that number varying across the prairie pothole region. It's probably very close in South Dakota, a little less than North Dakota.

So those are our goals. And it takes time. You have to realize that this part of the world was settled back in the 1870s. We began drainage at that time. And here we are now. It's only been in the last, say, 10 or 15 years that restorations are occurring. And in 30 years, we've been doing protection. So it's going to take some time to reach the goals where we want to be.

RACHEL REABE: Dr. Leitch, I read in one of your papers that when the question is asked, how many wetlands do we need, you said the politically correct answer seems to be all that we have and more. Would you respond to that?

JAY LEITCH: I think that's a response we just heard from Kevin. That's the question I've been asking for many years to the wetland proponents is how many more. And it keeps-- the answer is more. And I would say for any normal good, more is always better. But there comes a time when you've had enough movies, and enough shirts, and enough cars, and enough wetlands where the next dollar you spend or the next resource you allocate should be for something else. So more is not a very good answer.

And I'd just like to point out that the other two guests, Tim and Kevin, both work for agencies whose mission it is to protect, preserve wetlands. It's their job, and I respect them for that. That's not my mission. My mission is-- I'm a welfare economist-- is to look out for the well-being of society across all areas, not just environmental areas. So you would expect someone who works for an agency with a mission to protect wetlands to be in favor of more wetlands.

RACHEL REABE: Is your concern that money is being spent on wetland preservation, restoration that perhaps should be spent someplace else?

JAY LEITCH: My concern is we don't know if we're spending money on wetlands. It should be spent somewhere else because we don't know the value of those wetlands. I heard recently of a wetland restoration project in the Twin Cities area where over $700,000 was spent for 1 acre. I would suggest that there might be many other ways that the taxpayers in Minnesota-- and I think that was for a highway project-- could spend tax dollars than $700,000 for 1 acre of wetland.

RACHEL REABE: Dr. Leitch, is there a large group of people who support your position? Or is it a lonely place to be in 1998?

JAY LEITCH: I think it's a pretty lonely place. There are an awful lot of people who are biologists, ecologists, who have studied wetlands and appreciate the values of wetlands, and I respect them for that. There aren't many folks who stick their necks out as economists and ask these kinds of questions because it isn't very popular. So yes, I think it's a lonely place.

RACHEL REABE: Our phone lines are open today. The number is 1-800-537-5252 if you would like to join our conversation. In the last decade, more than 35,000 acres of wetlands have been restored in Minnesota through a US Fish and Wildlife program that works with private landowners. John Lindquist is a dairy farmer in the Fergus Falls area. He's on the phone with us this morning. Good morning, Mr. Lindquist.

JOHN LINDQUIST: Good morning.

RACHEL REABE: You've worked with the US Fish and Wildlife Service and a local sportsman's club to turn some of your 200 acres back to wetlands. Why?

JOHN LINDQUIST: Interested in seeing wildlife. I enjoy wildlife. And it was an area that was very difficult to farm, so decided at that point to turn it back into the wetlands. It was like about a 10-acre area that I turned back in with the help of our local sportsman's club, who's been very active in that.

And that was the start of it about 10, 12 years ago. And then we moved on to this summer. I contacted fish and wildlife because we had a couple of small areas here that really, again, wasn't farmable, and that we turned into an area that could hold a little bit more drainage and for the wildlife in general.

RACHEL REABE: How does it work to turn farmland back to wetlands?

JOHN LINDQUIST: Well, we turn--

RACHEL REABE: Dam up something? Fill it with water?

JOHN LINDQUIST: Yeah, it was-- basically, it was dammed up. The one area that we turned back this summer was part of a pasture of mine. And it was for my young stock. And we used that area for a part of one. And then we used-- on the other side of the wetlands that the sportsman's club and I had restored isn't a very big area. It's probably under an acre, that second parcel. But again, I wasn't really doing a whole lot of anything. I wasn't able to farm. I wasn't able to do anything with it. So we restored that to wetlands.

RACHEL REABE: And has it been successful? I know the US Fish and Wildlife restoration has just taken place in the last month or so. But the one that you did a number of years ago-- have you been able to tell?

JOHN LINDQUIST: Oh my, yes. We have some willows growing up in there. So it becomes habitat not only for waterfowl but also in the edges, deer, pheasants, which I raise. We raise pheasants, and deer, and ducks, and release with the sportsman's club.

And we had some areas out there. We dug a little bit so we could retain water in that area. And the wood ducks and the mallards-- and they are just doing wonderful. And we do not hunt that area. As far as the waterfowl, we leave that as a kind of a sanctuary for them.

RACHEL REABE: So for people who are listening to you, John, and saying, well, this is just a private shooting preserve for you, you're saying, no, that's not the point.

JOHN LINDQUIST: No, no, we do not. Like the waterfowl in that area is left alone. And we put up mallard nests so they can nest properly, wood duck nests, so they can have a better chance of nesting and improving their habitat. And it's really fun to go down there and just watch all the wildlife that's occurring in there.

RACHEL REABE: John Lindquist, thanks for joining us on the phone this morning.

JOHN LINDQUIST: Thank you.

RACHEL REABE: Kevin, so what we're hearing from Mr. Lindquist is you don't have to pick. You don't have to have just farmland or just wildlife habitat that they can be compatible. Are we seeing more and more people come around to that point of view?

KEVIN BRENNAN: Yes, we are, Rachel. I think, again, there's an increasing appreciation for the value of wetlands. And in John's case, he mentioned the ability to go down and look at this wetland and watch the wildlife, see the muskrats, see the waterfowl fly in and out. And it's an aesthetic value.

And how do you-- how do you-- what dollar amount do you put on that? And for him it's very valuable. And he's willing to restore an area in his pasture land to have that. And we do work with a lot of private landowners.

And what are the value of wetlands? I think in many ways, society determines that. And we have sportsmen's groups, a lot of them locally, the Evansville Sportsman's Club, the Fergus Fish and Game Club, who provide funds to us to assist us in these wetland restorations.

And they're focusing on the value as groups and the landowners who are doing this see the value of them. So they're important to those people for a variety of reasons. Either they enjoy wildlife. They like to hunt. Maybe they want water retained.

RACHEL REABE: And a lot of the wetland restoration is essentially paid through user's fees, isn't it, with duck stamp money.

KEVIN BRENNAN: All of the land that the Fish and Wildlife Service purchases in Minnesota is paid for with duck stamp dollars. And, of course, those dollars are generally bought or come from hunters who buy the stamp as necessary for hunting.

But there is a large amount of money that do come from nonprofit groups, whether local sportsmen's organizations, Ducks Unlimited, Pheasants Forever, a variety of groups around the state, Minnesota Waterfowl Association, that are partnered with the Fish and Wildlife Service to do wetland restorations.

And as a matter of fact, maybe even-- we do find even some of the watershed districts down around the cities, who are charged with water management, are cooperating with the service and restoration, as well as soil and water conservation districts. We're almost political subdivisions of the state.

RACHEL REABE: Dr. Leitch, does that make it less painful for you if you know that duck stamp money is in part going to restoration? It's not like that that money could be going to curing cancer or something like that. Does that make it easier to stomach?

JAY LEITCH: That is not painful at all to me, the private sector, individual landowners wanting wetlands. I own wetlands myself. And my home is not very far from where you are there in Fergus Falls. Ducks Unlimited, sportsmen's clubs-- that's terrific. That's the market working.

One thing that I've been thinking about that really bothers me that we've been maybe perpetuating a bit this morning is what I've referred to elsewhere as the bait-and-switch technique. We show pictures to society of wetlands with cattails, and ducks, and frogs. And we listen to geese calling in the distance.

And one of the speakers this morning said all wetlands have plants. But then when we implement legislation to protect wetlands and someone goes home and wants to build a garage in their backyard that gently slopes down to a ditch, only to realize that that dry land is, in fact, a wetland.

So on the one hand, we like wetlands, the cattails, the kind that you can see in Fergus there. But on the other hand, the law that protects wetlands and that people have to spend thousands of dollars replacing protects things that most normal citizens wouldn't in their furthest imagination think were wetlands.

RACHEL REABE: We have Mark on the phone with us from St. Paul this morning. Good morning, Mark.

MARK: Good morning. I have a couple of comments. And I'm just talking from just some experiences I had. Number one, I think it's Dr. Leitch who mentioned the fact that cropland has more hydrological value than wetlands. And I've always understood if you drain wetlands and use it for cropland, the wetlands beneath it are still there. So the hydrological-- the far field hydrological effects wouldn't be affected.

Number two, the comment you made just concerning about the wetlands that people generally don't feel is wetlands-- I think they're sometimes classified as type 2 wetlands-- are very much the most disappearing type of wetlands in Minnesota because they don't-- because they're not viewed as wetlands, and they're easiest to turn over to cropland.

So those are some of the more valuable. And I would think we wouldn't mislead people who are listening and rely on the people we're paying to determine what gives the most benefit to the nature that we're trying to protect.

Number three, I just would like to hear the comments of the various people on MnDOT's view on a lot of the things. They seem to have a WPA slash-and-burn type of mentality. And the road will go there and seem to get around a lot of the wetland issues and do what they say in the need of benefit and in public safety. So I'll just turn-- I'll just cut off here and listen to you guys on the radio. But I'm really interested in the MnDOT relationship, which seems to go-- adversely affect a lot of the wetlands issues.

RACHEL REABE: Let's start with that question, Kevin Brennan. Are you at odds that the US Fish and Wildlife Service with the Minnesota Department of Transportation occasionally?

KEVIN BRENNAN: I can only speak, Rachel, on a local basis here, where we have worked with the Minnesota Department of Transportation on road projects. And they are required both by state and federal law, especially if they receive any federal assistance, to mitigate any wetlands that they may destroy as part of their road construction projects. And they have been--

RACHEL REABE: When you say mitigate, do you mean replace?

KEVIN BRENNAN: That's correct. And I'm not a road engineer, but there may be places that a road simply has to go. And they are required to replace a wetland that may be destroyed. And what they have done is worked with us where they've restored a drained wetland so that there is a no net loss of wetland acreage on the landscape.

RACHEL REABE: Dr. Leitch, any comment?

JAY LEITCH: Yes, I agree. I think MnDOT has been one of the better agencies to replace wetlands. I don't think they are wetland destroyers. In fact, they create perhaps more wetlands than they convert because the mitigation ratio is most often more than 1 to 1.

So they may build a road through a crappy type 1 wetland that most people might not even think is a wetland and be required to spend taxpayers' dollars to build three times as much of very nice wetland, which is another abuse I see of the wetland legislation that we have.

RACHEL REABE: We're going to Duluth now where Kevin is on the phone. Good morning, Kevin.

KEVIN: Good morning, folks. Thanks for the discussion, very important. I live in Duluth, where our rural area-- our rural areas around Duluth are becoming suburbanized. As we speak, 80 and 40-acre parcels becoming subdivided into small, 5, 10-acre parcels that support single-family dwellings. And I think there probably is some wetland loss in this area.

And we have the unfortunate situation where some of our county board members in St. Louis County have been lobbying the state to relax wetlands rules, and some of our other local politicians have been doing the same. And I wondered where we are in terms of the importance of the northeastern Minnesota wetlands and in terms of the regulations and what's happening up here in this area.

KEVIN BRENNAN: Rachel, I'm not real familiar with the Duluth area. And I do have somewhat of a working understanding of the Wetland Conservation Act, which was passed by the state of Minnesota. And in most cases, wetlands that are destroyed due to development, again, have to be lost or have to be replaced. And that's through mitigation, which is replacing in kind. And like, in other words, if a small wetland that is type 1, oftentimes referred to as destroyed, then that's what they would have to replace.

I think when we talk about wetlands, we have to recognize that there is a definition for them. And the definition is it takes three things to be a wetland. One, they have to have wetland soils. Two, they have to have the plants that are typical of wetlands. And these occur when the area is allowed to revegetate naturally.

And three, they have to have hydrology or water on the area. And there is a definition. So there are some areas that may actually hold water that don't meet the definition of a wetland. But there is a definition out there, and that's what we use when we look at these areas.

RACHEL REABE: Thank you for the distinction. Marge is on the phone with us from St. Cloud. Good morning, Marge.

MARGE: Good morning. it would seem to make sense that if you have a lot of wetlands, you'd have less groundwater pollution. But I'm wondering, has there ever been any studies that would verify that?

RACHEL REABE: Dr. Leitch, any comment?

JAY LEITCH: I think there's been a study that would verify almost anything, probably either side of that case.

RACHEL REABE: You could just find it.

JAY LEITCH: Yes. The literature is full of studies. And that's another problem with the wetlands issue is that a study may have been done in Louisiana, and the results of that are applied to wetlands elsewhere to get wetland regulation. I hate to act like an academic and say we need more research, but maybe that what I should be saying is we should apply the results of studies elsewhere less often to unrelated areas than we do.

I'd like to respond a bit to what I think it was Kevin said about the three parameters for wetlands, water, plants, and soil. I don't have the wetland regulation in front of me, but for the water parameter, it says that there must be water to within several inches. And I don't remember if it's 10 inches of the surface for 10% of the growing season. So you could never, ever see water on top of the surface.

And that would still be a wetland as long as you could dig a hole deep enough to find water. And it's maybe 10 inches. I don't remember, and again, only for 10% of the growing season. So that's where we've extended the jurisdictional definition of wetland, well, well beyond what the normal person thinks is a wetland.

KEVIN BRENNAN: I don't disagree with Jay. There is a definite-- the definition is the soils may be saturated. And I think it's 14 days and within 10 to 12 inches of the surface. And they are wetlands that meet that definition and have value. They have value as-- again, as recharge areas, I'm sure, close to the surface. A lot of those wetlands in Eastern Ottertail County that I'm familiar with are directly tied to the groundwater too.

RACHEL REABE: Kevin Brennan, are most restoration efforts successful? We heard a success story from John Lindquist, who said they've came in. Now, we've got the Ducks. We don't shoot them. We love them. Wildlife is here. We're seeing willows and cattails. Is it that easy always or most of the time? Or do you have a good success ratio?

KEVIN BRENNAN: Yeah, we do here in western Minnesota. Out of this office, I think we've restored close to, well, well over 1,500 wetlands. And we work with soils here that are easy to restore wetlands with. We have a lot of clay. As a result, we-- and we do some prework, survey work. We take a look to make sure that we're not affecting neighboring properties, and that the restorations are actually feasible, and they're very easy to do.

And we have a low failure rate. Probably the biggest thing we run into is some erosion on our ditch plugs or our dikes, especially in high years like last year-- high runoff years like last year. But in general, I would say 95% to 99% of our wetlands are restored and function just fine.

RACHEL REABE: We do have an audience listening and watching today at the Prairie Wetlands Learning Center. We have a question from the audience. Dan?

DAN GUNDERSON: [INAUDIBLE] and to our guests.

AUDIENCE: I have a question for Mr. Leitch. Actually, I have a comment and a question. My comment is that you keep comparing wetlands to movies, T-shirts, and I believe the other one was garages in involving money in the issue. And I think you're really avoiding the question of, what is a healthy earth? And what are we willing to give up for that healthy earth? And how are we going to find out what a healthy earth is?

And I haven't really heard a lot of information from you about, are we addressing that question? My comment is to you then, where would you recommend that the money go to? What other resources are you referring to? You've referred to other resources a few times. And I just was wondering what you had specifically.

RACHEL REABE: Dr. Leitch, in our closing half a minute, why don't you respond to that?

JAY LEITCH: I'm not recommending the resources go anywhere. All I am questioning is all of the resources that are being spent toward protecting one particular part of the landscape, and that's wetlands. Sure, wetlands have value, but other parts of the landscape, natural landscape as well as human landscape, also have value. We don't have no net loss laws for tallgrass prairie for our hardwood forests for human elements.

That's my question is that there is this pendulum, this bandwagon to protect wetlands. And I think it's not founded in science, or economics, or sociology. It is founded in the classrooms where they teach ecology. And people believe, and rightfully so, that wetlands are valuable. But we need to trade that value off for other values of society, present and future generations.

RACHEL REABE: We're halfway through this Mainstreet broadcast from the Prairie Wetlands of Fergus Falls. Tim Bodeen, Kevin Brennan, and Jay Leitch, thank you for being with us. Next hour, we'll turn our attention to waterfowl, the ducks, and geese that breed in this prairie pothole region of the northern plains and are now migrating by the millions through Minnesota.

Fergus Falls is duck hunting country. We'll talk to duck hunters and a waterfowl manager next hour, as well as the Fergus Falls wildlife artist who won this year's duck stamp contest. It's all ahead when we continue our Mainstreet special from the Prairie Wetlands Learning Center after the news.

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