Minnesota River Interviews - Dave Craigmile - Lac qui Parle River

"It’s quite a Mecca for wildlife in here for the various diving ducks, pelicans, turtles; almost any type of North American Water Fowl comes in the area here."

Video Text: "Prairie Wings Wildlife Management Area (PWWMA) is one of the larger open water body parcels in Maxwell Township. It leads across a whole section here and joins up with a U.S. Fish and Wildlife project on the other side, another wetland area that is more of lower water marshy, more marshy area. This is kept supplied with water by the drainage from the area field around the wetland. It’s quite a Mecca for wildlife in here for the various diving ducks, pelicans, turtles—almost any type of North American Water Fowl comes in the area here.

The [water quality] test that I did down here was where the tiles come into this wildlife management area. We looked at the water quality coming in. We were basically looking at the phosphorous and the nitrates and the bacteria in the water. Then at the outlet, which we’ll go to in a little while here, then we just measured at the outlet of this complex as well.

As to what those levels were. Just in a quick summary. We would have nitrates coming in at about 15-20 ppm, they were going out from three to five parts, so the wetland did knock those down. The thing that does happen in the wetland though, is we have phosphorous coming in at 1/10th of a milligram per liter or less and it would go out at about 3/10th, from 3/10ths to 5/10ths."

This page was last updated 8/08