Always on the run with issues

When Tom Landwehr arrived in Wadena last Wednesday to speak to county commissioners after stops in northwestern cities like Crookston and Thief River Falls, some of his thoughts were deep in southeastern Minnesota.

A deer farm operator in Fillmore County had neglected to fix a hole in a fence despite repeated warnings. Whitetails were wandering in and out of their enclosure and mixing with their wild cousins.

With a deadly disease called Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) present in the area, the threat the deer farm posed to Minnesota wild deer herd was immense, yet the Board of Animal Health, which regulates the 400 deer farms in Minnesota, seemed oblivious to the danger. Landwehr had gone on record demanding that the board take action.

"We just want their rules and regulations that are in place to be adequately enforced," Landwehr said. "Their whole industry statewide is a $15 million industry, and yet deer hunting in Minnesota is a $500 million industry. It's absurd to protect this $15 million industry if it's going to be threatening a $500 million industry."

The Fillmore County problem is one of many that Landwehr has to wrestle with in his position. He has the responsibility of answering for the health of the natural resources for the 12th largest state in the county - a land of prairies, woodlands, fields and forests encompassing 86,936 square miles and thousands upon thousands of lakes, rivers streams and ponds.

Landwehr runs what many would agree to be one of the highest profile government agencies in Minnesota - the Department of Natural Resources. The DNR is one of 28 cabinets in state government. It operates on $1 billion of the state's $44 billion budget over each two-year period.

The colossal responsibilities of his job are shared, in part, by the 2,700 men and women who work for the DNR. Landwehr first went to work for the DNR in the early 1980s. He rose to become a wildlife manager at three different stations - Shakopee, Owatonna and Madison. He was working for the Nature Conservancy when Dayton tabbed him for the commissioner's job in 2011.

So what is the DNR's biggest challenge six and half years into his job?

Landwehr would say water management.

"Right now the biggest overall challenge is water management. There is more demand for groundwater appropriations, for irrigation, more water for municipal use, for industrial use, we've got flooding issues. It's just a host of things around water."

When talk about Minnesota's water comes up so does aquatic invasive species. The state is currently locked in a big battle with Zebra Mussels.

"Zebra Mussels first became a problem in the 80s and 90s in water facilities - treatment plants and locks and dams - they'd gum everything up," Landwehr said. "A company did go out and invent a product called Zequanox that is a bacteria, and it only kills Zebra Mussels and they will apply it in small, closed systems. So there is a selective poison for Zebra Mussels, but it is not economical at this point to do it in a lakewide system. It will require some (Research and Development) R and D to make it happen."

Landwehr said the DNR is doing so research on ways of controlling invasive species but said more is being done at the Minnesota Aquatic Invasive Species Center at the University of Minnesota.

Water management also whistles up another hot button item for the state - buffer strips.

Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton was not pleased to hear at a Pheasant Summit a couple years ago the state's buffer strip law was not working. It was too complicated and difficult to enforce. Dayton made some changes to simplify and enforce the initiative.

"Now the SWCDs (Soil and Water Conservation Districts) are going be responsible for monitoring and enforcement. DNR produced the map that identified the water bodies that needed buffer protection and made public revisions and gave the map to SWCDs." Landwehr said.

Dayton, an ardent pheasant hunter, liked the idea of more cover for pheasants, but Landwehr said he liked another change it would make even more.

"When the governor's proposal came out it was all about water quality," Landwehr said. "The difference is that if you are growing pheasants on buffers you can't cut the grass. If you want to protect water with buffers you can cut the grass. The current law allows you to take the hay of there."

Landwehr has done some pheasant hunting himself. When he was the wildlife manager at Madison, in southwestern Minnesota, they were thick.

Last week the state released figures showing the state pheasant index was down 26 percent - not a good thing for hunters or the DNR, which has been called on in recent years to raise more and more of their own operating money because of state cutbacks.

"We have a lot of people would go hunting but they don't think they have anywhere to go or the populations are so low they aren't interested," Landwehr said. "When pheasant numbers are high, pheasant hunter numbers are high. Pheasants need grass more than anything, so we are working to get more Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) land through the Farm Bill."

CRP first came along in 1985 and the Farm Bill set a limit on 40 million acres of the grassland cover. Minnesota reached 1.9 million acres and when it did Minnesota pheasant hunters shot a half-million roosters. Now Minnesota's CRP acres total one million acres and the pheasant harvest is down to 130,000 birds.

While many sportsmen have an opinion of what they think of Landwehr and the DNR, the gate can swing the other way too. Landwehr has thoughts about what they are doing and not doing.

"What they are doing right is that they are hunting and fishing, they are getting out and enjoying it, they belong to organizations that are very helpful," Landwehr said. "What they aren't doing right is that they are not bringing enough young kids in. Someone has to take them out hunting and fishing. The second thing is that they have to pay more attention to what is happening in the legislature."