Baudette area wildlife

The Baudette wildlife work area

A Baudette wildlife crew manages a prescribed burn.

Hunters, trappers and wildlife watchers in northeastern Beltrami, northwestern Koochiching, Lake of the Woods and eastern Roseau counties benefit from the management, habitat, and oversight work of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources' Baudette area wildlife office.

Baudette area wildlife oversee an area that includes more than 1.2 million acres of public and private land. Almost one-half of these acres are in public ownership. These include 25 state Wildlife Management Areas totaling more than 142,000 acres. These WMAs include the Northwest Angle WMA, which is a colonial bird nesting rookery on the north end of Lake of the Woods down to Shooks Slough (forested wetland complex) just south of Kelliher.

This work area also includes the south shore of Lake of the Woods as well as the Red Lake Peatland Scientific and Natural Area. Staff also coordinate wildlife management of 390,000 acres of state forest land, including potions of the Beltrami Island, Lake of the Woods, Lost River, Northwest Angle, Pine Island and Red Lake state forests. They also manage 28,000 acres of Federal Land Utilization Project Lands within the Beltrami Island State Forest.

Our work

• Manage wildlife habitat improvement projects that maintain hundreds of acres of lowland brush (shearing, mowing, and/or burning every year), mow five to ten forest wildlife openings and coordinate hundreds of acres of timber sales annually with the Division of Forestry.
• Annually conduct wildlife population surveys for ruffed grouse, sharp-tailed grouse, spruce grouse, woodcock, small mammal, and predator surveys throughout the work area.
• Two shallow lake surveys every five years.
• Annually band 100 to 150 Canada geese.
• Assist with staffing two deer check stations for CWD data collection.
• Handle whitetail deer, bear, and Canada goose depredation complaints.
• Manage two bear permit areas, three deer permit areas and one special deer hunt in Zippel Bay State Park. Coordinate a special deer archery hunt in city of Warroad. Coordinate 15 big game registration stations and two furbearer registration stations.
• Present five to 10 wildlife identification/nature walk programs to elementary students at five school districts. Assist with staffing the DNR cabin at Lake of the Woods County Fair. Set up two public sharp tail grouse observation blinds
• Annually clear and mow 52 miles of hunter walking trails to provide hunting and outdoor recreation opportunity. Two of these trails are cleared with volunteer assistance from Whitetails Unlimited volunteers. Develop new walking trails every 2 to 3 years.
• Conduct environmental review of transmission line impacts, protected waters projects and judicial ditch clean out projects that can be detrimental to downstream landowners and affect water quality.