Oregon WRP Success Story

Polk County Project Provides Showcase for Wetlands Reserve Program

Story Courtesy of Bruce Taylor, Executive Director, Oregon Wetlands Joint Venture

Two years after the Natural Resources Conservation Service helped them convert 320 acres of agricultural land back into wetlands, Polk County grass seed farmers Mark and Debbie Knaupp are enthusiastic about the benefits of the project. There's only one problem for Mark. "It's very distracting," an OSU wildlife graduate and avid waterfowl hunter who spends most of his time managing 850 acres for grass seed production.

A farmer for 23 years, Knaupp has been watching closely the habitat changes in the bottomlands he enrolled in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wetlands Reserve Program. "It's exceeded all my expectations," he says. "It's amazing, the response to the change in hydrology-how the vegetation has come back, the amount of bird use, and how the habitat has developed. It's happened very fast. The birds found it and moved into it very quickly."

Enrolling a portion of his land in the Wetlands Reserve Program, which pays landowners for a permanent conservation easement and funds any needed restoration work, was also a good business decision, according to Knaupp. He used his easement payment to buy an adjacent 180 acres and consolidate his operations. "It allowed me to get out of some marginal land and replace it with better land that was less sensitive and easier to farm," says Knaupp. "Plus we restored 300 acres of really productive habitat that's producing 20 times the benefits of a farmed wetland."

Acreage before restoration	Acreage after restoration

Fall through spring, his land now draws thousands of ducks and geese, shorebirds and swallows. Breeding birds there this summer include seven species of waterfowl. Bitterns, rails, herons and egrets wade through the marshes, while bald eagles work the skies overhead.

Two years ago, these wetlands were planted to tall fescue, producing seeds for lawns in eastern states. But a series of wet years and a growing winter population of hungry Canada geese had made the low-lying lands along Mud Slough increasingly difficult to farm before Knaupp enrolled them in the Wetlands Reserve Program.

Working with the local office of the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and Ducks Unlimited, Knaupp and his partners built a series of low dikes, sprayed out the fescue and did some limited planting of native trees and shrubs. Less than two years later, shallow-water impoundments are sprouting native emergent plants ranging from beggarticks and waterplantain to willows and black cottonwood seedlings. Wetland meadows support tufted hairgrass, once widespread throughout the Willamette Valley, and Nelson's checkermallow, a showy flower listed as "threatened" under the federal Endangered Species Act.

"Waterfowl is the plus that drives it for me, though," says Knaupp. "I enjoy waterfowl and waterfowl habitat. The Wetlands Reserve Program allowed me to get my money out of the property and restore habitat at the same time. It's the best of both worlds for me."

For additional information contact: Ken Hale, Natural Resources Conservation Service, 289 E. Ellendale #504, Dallas, OR 97338; telephone: 503-623-5534

Story first appeared in Oregon Wetlands, Newsletter of the Oregon Wetlands Joint Venture, July 1998

Photographs courtesy of Robert Tracey, NRCS Yamhill County Resource Conservationist, and Ken Hale, Polk County NRCS Resource Conservationist

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