Welcome

Submitted by Tokina McHarry, JRSCD Education/Outreach Manager, and Jacob Klath, ND Precision Ag and Conservation Specialist for Pheasants Forever

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PATH Announcement – Previously posted to PheasantsForever.org. (https://www.pheasantsforever.org/Newsroom/2025-August/Public-Access-to-Habitat-Program-Expands-to-North-Dakota.aspx)

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Pheasants Forever is proud to announce the Public Access to Habitat (PATH) Program has expanded to North Dakota. PATH represents the organization’s primary mechanism to increase public hunting access on private lands – a key strategy identified in Pheasants Forever’s National Strategic Plan. Pilot programs initiated in South Dakota and Nebraska have been extremely successful, securing public hunting access to over 100,000 acres of high-quality habitat on private lands. The PATH program now moves to North Dakota, where it will be used to restore and maintain grassland habitat and expand public hunting opportunities in one of the nation’s top upland destinations.

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“We’re incredibly excited to bring PATH to our state,” said Emily Spolyar, Pheasants Forever’s North Dakota state coordinator. “And we look forward to strengthening our partnership with the North Dakota Game and Fish Department (NDGF). Collectively, we aim to restore 15,000 acres of high-quality grassland cover through PATH that will be maintained as wildlife habitat and open to public hunting for a minimum of ten years.”

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In North Dakota, PATH will bolster the existing Private Lands Open to Sportsmen (PLOTS) program. PLOTS is a voluntary program administered by the NDGF that provides a financial incentive to ranchers, farmers and landowners for allowing public hunting access — while also increasing the quality and quantity of habitat on the ground. The PATH program will complement PLOTS by providing an additional incentive to landowners willing to create new habitat on marginal cropland acres.

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Pheasants Forever was recently awarded a $1M grant from the Outdoor Heritage Fund (OHF) to support this new initiative. Those funds will be further leveraged by financial contributions from onX Hunt through onX's Adventure Forever Grants Program, as well as from local Pheasants Forever chapters and donors, the North Dakota Natural Resources Trust and other conservation partners. This will allow North Dakota PATH to build upon the recent success of a pilot program initiated by the “MonDak” Pheasants Forever Chapter, which provides similar incentives to landowners in Williams and Divide Counties.

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“The MonDak program has been pretty successful, and now we’ll have the PATH program available in 38 counties across our main historic pheasant range,” said Andrew Dinges, NDGF’s west region supervisor. “It’s hard to do this work on your own, and that’s where a partnership like we have here between Game and Fish and Pheasants Forever can really move the needle in delivering habitat and increasing access.”

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For more information on PATH in North Dakota, please contact any member of the ND State Team: Emily Spolyar (State Coordinator) at (517)250-2440 or espolyar@pheasantsforever.org, Renee Tomala (Senior Field Rep) at (701)220-8769 or rtomala@pheasantsforever.org, Seth Owens (Education and Outreach Coordinator) at (701)430-9574 or sowens@pheasantsforever.org, Kelli Kuska (Rx Burn Coordinator) at (541)619-5188 or kkuska@pheasantsforever.org, Jared Ross (Precision Ag and Conservation Specialist) at (701)471-0032 or jross@pheasantsforever.org, Hannah Peterson (Precision Ag and Conservation Specialist) at (701)663-4817 or hpeterson@pheasantsforever.org, Jacob Klath (Precision Ag and Conservation Specialist) at (701)430-2109 or jklath@pheasantsforever.org.

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Dates to Remember for the James River SCD/Ellendale USDA Service Center:

• October 8– SCD Board Meeting, 9 am, USDA Service Center, Ellendale

• October 13 - Columbus Day (also known as Indigenous Peoples' Day), office closed

• October 24-31 – International Bat Week – watch for upcoming events!

 

For more information contact the James River Soil Conservation District and Ellendale NRCS office at 349-3653, ext. 3. Our field office is in Ellendale at 51 N. 1st Street. Also, remember to visit the James River Soil Conservation District Facebook page and our websites for more information –http://www.jamesriverscd.org/ and http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/site/nd/home/. The NRCS is an equal opportunity employer, provider and lender.