Iowa Build-A-Wildlife Area
The Iowa Build-A-Wildlife Area campaign kicked off on August 10th at the Iowa State Fair and has a goal of raising $1 million for the acquisition of public Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) during the next year. Pheasants Forever, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR), Iowa County Conservation Boards and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service started this campaign based upon its incredible success in Minnesota. The Build a Wildlife Area campaign is a wide reaching effort to engage individual donors, corporate organizations, non-profit and government organizations to create permanent public wildlife areas. Iowa is the third state to start a Build a Wildlife Area partnership following Minnesota and Wisconsin. The Iowa campaign will be a feature of the National Pheasant Fest in January 2007 at the Iowa Events Center in Des Moines.
"The Build a Wildlife Area program taps into something very important to all Iowa outdoorsmen and women, public wildlife land," explained Dave Van Waus, PF's regional biologist in central Iowa. "Not only will this new program expand the land available to outdoor enthusiasts, it will perpetually secure the protection of critical wildlife habitat. The program's benefits for Iowa's environment, natural resources and the general public are considerable."
PF and its 103 Iowa chapters have done a spectacular job of building wildlife areas for 22 years. PF created the Build a Wildlife Area campaign to give individual donors and corporate organizations, agencies or foundations the opportunity to ensure Iowa's conservation legacy. Through the Build a Wildlife Area campaign, each one dollar donation turns into three dollars automatically through matching grants from the Iowa DNR and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. This partnership automatically triples the value of each donation you make. The Iowa Build a Wildlife Area has a goal of raising $1 million for its first campaign year. With matching funds, that goal would create $3 million dollars for new Iowa land acquisitions.
The funds raised will be used to purchase land for new public wildlife management areas. These new areas will then be transferred over to the Iowa DNR or local County Conservation Boards for management and opened for public hunting and outdoor recreational activities. The campaign will then renew itself each year so that individuals and corporations can participate for many years to come. Sites for the new wildlife areas are not pre-selected prior to the campaign. This decision engages all of Iowa to participate each year.
