North Dakota Outdoors: Reminder: It may take years for North Dakota’s wildlife populations to grow | News, sports, jobs

Submitted photo It can take years for fish and wildlife populations to grow under optimal habitat, weather, water and food conditions. NDGF photo by Ashley Peterson.

You don’t have to be a meteorologist, hydrologist, agronomist or even biologist to realize that North Dakota’s weather in 2019 will make history for mostly all the wrong reasons.

The winter lasted too long and then the summer wasn’t hot enough and ended too soon. Autumn was cool and brought too much rain. An October snowstorm hit much of North Dakota on the opening weekend of pheasant season, making this precious weekend more of an exercise in dealing with snow and closed roads than hunting birds in some places.

That was quite a contrast to the pheasant opener on October 10, 2015, when the daytime high temperature was 97 degrees – a record high for the day and the entire month in West Fargo. Hunters this year were concerned about heat stress in dogs and their inability to start fires in tinder-dry grasslands.

This year, the high temperature in Fargo at the Oct. 12 pheasant opener was 34 degrees. Interstates 94 and 29 were closed due to accumulated snow and high winds.

As I write this in mid-November, the effects of this storm and several significant rain events before and after are still clearly being felt as the temperature rises above freezing for an extended period of time. Even good country roads have turned into muddy skating rinks in parts of the state, preventing farmers from starting or even completing harvests and preventing deer hunters from getting to traditional locations.

In many places, record-breaking fall rainfall combined with unusually cold temperatures have impacted outdoor activities for just about everyone at some point.

Such is life on the prairie, we tell ourselves. We enjoy Thanksgiving and look forward to the good, even though we realistically know that the coming winter and spring may bring more undesirable circumstances.

Still, there is often a glimmer of hope when it comes to extreme weather, wildlife and fish. A significant cold spell from late October through November meant an early start to ice fishing in parts of the state.

Additional water has also reduced the risk of winter die-offs in a number of North Dakota fishing lakes. Greg Power, fisheries chief for the state Game and Fish Department, said in the Nov. 21 edition of Outdoors Online, the agency’s weekly web-based video newscast, that perhaps 30 to 40 lakes in North Dakota would have been at risk from winter die-offs simply from normal winter weather. And that would have been in addition to about three dozen other lakes that experienced significant fish kills last winter.

The additional water not only prevents some short-term losses, but also creates the conditions for improved natural spawning conditions for pike and perch and improved survival of the stocked fish. The expected fish production won’t necessarily benefit anglers immediately, but Power says fish populations in many of the state’s lakes are already in good shape, which is a positive thought to hold on to as winter approaches.