Legends of the Wild, A Field And Stream Production | Hunting, Fishing and the Outdoors
Sep 23, 2026 · 1 hr 1 min · 16 segments
The future of North America’s waterfowl may depend on protecting the prairie potholes today. What happens to duck populations when the wetlands and grasslands they depend on disappear? Sam Soholt…
You know, one, just while we're talking about this thing and about this, you know, we've talked a lot about habitat loss, right? Yeah.
Are there, like... obviously it would be incredibly expensive, especially now that diesel's over six bucks a gallon or whatever.
Are there projects or incentives or anything like that to put wetlands back on the landscape?
And one key lesson that I've learned during my career, Sam, is that Really to do that, you almost have to purchase the land and hold the title to it to do that restoration.
You know, because, you know, all the costs to convert it, you know, to agriculture and, and do those things, you know, it's almost like a one-way ratchet where they go away, but it's really expensive and challenging to get them to come back.
So, you know, but there are places where that's going on, you know, in, in Minnesota, um, they have that Lessard Sam's outdoor.
I know DU and Pheasants Forever works on purchasing and restoring land that includes a bunch of wetlands.
Um, so they do a bunch of that work there and, you know, physically we can restore the wetlands.
It really means taking out the drain, you know, whether that be a ditch or drain tile and, and the, the plant community comes back once you fix the hydrology.
So, um, Those opportunities are out there, but it's way, way more expensive to do that than it is to protect what we've got.
So that's why, you know, there's a big premium on protecting all the good areas that we still have.
So it is happening just for now, it can't be at the scale that we might all want.
The focus of the money has to be on like purchasing easements or, you know, putting ground in.
You know, one, just while we're talking about this thing and about this, you know, we've talked a lot about habitat loss, right? Yeah.
Are there, like... obviously it would be incredibly expensive, especially now that diesel's over six bucks a gallon or whatever.
Are there projects or incentives or anything like that to put wetlands back on the landscape?
And one key lesson that I've learned during my career, Sam, is that Really to do that, you almost have to purchase the land and hold the title to it to do that restoration.
You know, because, you know, all the costs to convert it, you know, to agriculture and, and do those things, you know, it's almost like a one-way ratchet where they go away, but it's really expensive and challenging to get them to come back.
So, you know, but there are places where that's going on, you know, in, in Minnesota, um, they have that Lessard Sam's outdoor.
I know DU and Pheasants Forever works on purchasing and restoring land that includes a bunch of wetlands.
Um, so they do a bunch of that work there and, you know, physically we can restore the wetlands.
It really means taking out the drain, you know, whether that be a ditch or drain tile and, and the, the plant community comes back once you fix the hydrology.
So, um, Those opportunities are out there, but it's way, way more expensive to do that than it is to protect what we've got.
So that's why, you know, there's a big premium on protecting all the good areas that we still have.
So it is happening just for now, it can't be at the scale that we might all want.
The focus of the money has to be on like purchasing easements or, you know, putting ground in.
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