Ep. 714 - Roots of Restoration: Private Landowners Powering the Flyway Forests
Can we do a mic check, please? Everybody, welcome back to the Ducks Unlimited podcast. I'm your host, doctor Mike Brasher. I'm your host, Katie Burke. I'm your host, doctor Jared Hemphith.
Mike Bartlett:And I'm your host, Matt Harrison.
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Jerad Henson:Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Ducks Unlimited podcast. I'm doctor Jared Henson. I'm gonna be your host today. We got a cool episode.
Jerad Henson:I think this one's gonna be informative and a lot of fun talking about something a little different. We're gonna be going into some new programs that DU's been working on. It's actually not terribly new. We've been rolling with it for several years on a pilot program. It's Ducks Unlimited Flyway Forest.
Jerad Henson:And to help me go through this, I've got some special guests today. I've got Maddie McFarland, who is a DU biologist from our Southern Region office. Maddie, thank you for being here.
Madie McFarland:Thank you for having me.
Jerad Henson:And we've got one of our landowners that signed up for this early part of the program, mister Mike Bartlett. So, mister Bartlett, thank you so much for joining us.
Mike Bartlett:Oh, thank you for having me. I'm honored.
Jerad Henson:We're well, we're we're honored to be here and really happy to talk to you about what we've got going today. For our listeners, one of the things we really wanna do is I would love to have Maddie kinda give a quick introduction because she's been on the podcast before, but it was a long time ago. She's moved through a lot of DU positions since then. And so can you give a quick background on yourself, Maddie, to what you do at DU and how you came to Ducks Unlimited?
Madie McFarland:Yeah. Yeah. So I'm Maddie McFarlane. I am the regional biologist for Mississippi and Alabama out of our southern regional office. I have been with DU, a little over three years now, and I am primarily responsible for delivering our conservation programs in those two states, Flyway Forest being one of those responsibilities.
Madie McFarland:And I got involved with DU early on as a volunteer. I was involved with my collegiate chapter at LSU, the Tiger chapter, and then at Mississippi State University where I got my master's degree. Yep. Go Dawgs. And I was involved with the Bulldog chapter there.
Madie McFarland:You know? So early on from a volunteer standpoint, you know, I I had a very surface level view of Ducks Unlimited. You know? I came into this organization thinking all we did was raise money for the Ducks, have fun dinners, and raffle off some cool gear.
Jerad Henson:That's pretty common.
Madie McFarland:Yeah. Yeah.
Mike Bartlett:I've I've been to those. They're nice.
Madie McFarland:I know. It's a great way to be a part of DU, but it really wasn't until I learned about DU's conservation internships that I got involved with the organization from a professional standpoint. So after I finished up my undergrad degree at LSU, an opportunity crossed my desk to be a conservation intern for Ducks Unlimited Ducks Unlimited, excuse me, in our Great Lakes Atlantic region, and I jumped on that opportunity and was fortunate enough to get it. I spent a year delivering conservation programs across that 21 state region, meeting biologists, development staff, all the different folks at DU that, you know, make our mission run over the course of a year, and that was such a not to be cheesy, but a life changing opportunity for me. I left that internship knowing that I wanted to come back and hopefully eventually retire from Ducks Unlimited.
Madie McFarland:So I went back to school to get my master's degree at Mississippi State University, like I said, and then an opportunity opened up to, go work for Ducks Unlimited in Illinois and Indiana as part of our Big Rivers Initiative. Again, I jumped at that opportunity and was fortunate enough to get it. I spent about two years in Illinois before my heart was just calling me back south, back home, and was fortunate enough to transfer down to our southern region and now deliver conservation in my neck of the woods.
Jerad Henson:And that's where you did your bachelors work too. Yes. In the Southern region.
Madie McFarland:Yes. Yeah. In Southern Louisiana on a marsh terracing, which I believe we've done a couple podcast episodes on.
Jerad Henson:Some of that stuff. Yeah. We're so glad you're here. Thank you. So glad we've got you on this episode today.
Jerad Henson:Mister Mike, can you give us kind of a quick background on just what you've been doing here in your farm?
Mike Bartlett:Well, I've I've been a real crop farmer all my life, basically, working life other than brief interlude in the army. And then, we also had cattle and basically had cattle just to give our labor something to do in the wintertime. I never felt I made much money out of it. But now, of course, cattle are the only thing that doing well. But I always loved, you know, the outdoors and hunting and and fishing and and always loved forests, trees.
Mike Bartlett:Took a forestry course when I was at Mississippi State. But I heard about this program from a friend of mine, Jake McFadden, who's a big, Ducks Unlimited guy. And he was eating lunch one day with us over at my son's retail shop. You know? He's in the meat business.
Mike Bartlett:And he told us about this program. And so I contacted Nick Smith, and he came up and had a look, and I said, I like it. And I signed up just about as much land as I could Yeah. West of here. I'll save one pasture because my son, you know, but I had some land in CRP, but it had only been signed up for one year, so I paid the government back for that.
Mike Bartlett:Wasn't much. And then I took the CRP land and some hay ground I had and one big pasture, and then the rest was cropland. Yeah. Signed up almost 700 acres. Yeah.
Jerad Henson:Right. It was a lot. We've I walked a bunch of it. Almost all of it. And before we jump into too much more of that so that our listeners can follow along, Maddie, do you mind giving, like, a quick rundown just the 30,000 foot view of what the Flyway Forest program is?
Madie McFarland:Because
Jerad Henson:it's a little different from our traditional
Madie McFarland:It is. It's little bit different from what, you know, we're known for. But Flyway Forest, in a nutshell, is an afforestation and reforestation program that is designed to restore large swaths of bottomland hardwood forest, particularly in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley. It is a program that is geared towards private lands and private landowners, to support their restoration, stewardship, and management goals and objectives of their property. And Ducks Unlimited is doing this in partnership with Land and Water to restore what was 3,000 acres in our pilot program, and I'm excited to share that we have exceeded that goal by about 400 plus acres in the MAV across Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, which are all eligible areas for the program.
Madie McFarland:And these are long term partnerships that we are entering with private landowners, to steward these forests for at least forty years, across the, carbon crediting cycle. And I should back up and say, because this is a pretty important component of the program
Madie McFarland:You just that you've done a little bit.
Mike Bartlett:You did. Yeah. Yeah.
Madie McFarland:That, the program, is primarily designed for carbon sequestration to help us meet our ecosystem goods and services needs. But given that we are Ducks Unlimited, the program is also designed to benefit natural resources and, benefit wildlife as well while supporting outdoor recreation. So all that to say that these are partnerships that we are entering with private landowners to steward these forests for, at a minimum forty years. But landowners can opt to enter into a permanent conservation easement with Ducks Unlimited so we can continue to protect the conservation value of their property even after those forty years are up. Or landowners have the option to enter into a forty year term contract with Ducks Unlimited to maintain these forests as intact stands during that crediting cycle.
Madie McFarland:And landowners are paid a fixed rate, per acre, for the areas that we reforest. And the payment rates differ a little bit depending on if you're going for a conservation easement or a term contract and what your land use might be like. But all in all, it is a long term, partnership to restore bottomland hardwoods in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley on private lands, to steward, these stands for carbon sequestration, but also to benefit wildlife. And And for Ducks Unlimited, we hope that's waterfowl.
Jerad Henson:Yeah. That's our hope. And I and I wanna mention one thing that's really cool about this program that's a little different from some of the other carbon programs is that we're offering that upfront payment. Right? We're derisking the carbon market to the landowner.
Jerad Henson:DU and our our partner, Land and Water, they're the we're we're the ones assuming that risk. Right? So that's that's one of the the caveats I definitely wanted to mention. Right? It's we're trying to give landowners an option, a voluntary option to do conservation and get paid to do it.
Madie McFarland:Yeah.
Jerad Henson:Right? That's the right. Yeah. Exactly. We can't expect landowners to do things for free.
Jerad Henson:That's not fair.
Madie McFarland:That's right. That's a good point to make, Jared. Ducks Unlimited and our partners, Land and Water, we pay for every bit of the program. Like Jared said, we offer landowners an upfront payment for the reforested areas. We also pay for all of the site prep act the planting, as well as the long term monitoring as well.
Madie McFarland:So really a a pretty straightforward way for landowners to get into the carbon world if that's something that they're interested in without having to deal with all of the headache that could come with it.
Mike Bartlett:Yeah. Well, the carbon sequest ration will benefit that's not gonna kick in for a number of years. Right.
Madie McFarland:Right. Right.
Mike Bartlett:But it'll be significant once it starts. I'm sure. It is. Yeah.
Jerad Henson:Yeah. It actually doesn't take as long as you would think. Once you start letting mother nature go back, you've seen some of them pastures. They're growing up thick. They're in pasture other than those row crop fields there.
Mike Bartlett:The row the row crop's more than the pasture.
Jerad Henson:That's what mean, but it's got
Mike Bartlett:The weed growth is worse than in the Yeah. Row crop fields, but the
Jerad Henson:But all that sequestering carbon and putting to
Mike Bartlett:to the chaperies. What shocked me, y'all coulda almost got no trees planted for free because the number of volunteer trees that are coming up. I can't believe it. Now they may not be as desirable as the species as you as you
Madie McFarland:want,
Mike Bartlett:but I see a lot of sycamores. Yeah. I got nothing against a sycamore, but
Jerad Henson:That's a early successional tree, and they're gonna jump in there. But one of the reasons we do plan is to try and give those oaks, hickories
Mike Bartlett:A chance.
Jerad Henson:A chance. Right?
Mike Bartlett:Yep. And they're they're not very shade tolerant species either, are they? Oaks and hickories?
Jerad Henson:The saplings can can fight, but it's a slow game.
Mike Bartlett:Yeah.
Jerad Henson:Right? It's a much slower growing. And over time, they'll end up being a dominant species if you can get them established.
Mike Bartlett:Yeah. And then I noticed on the program you did for me, you planted a number of sweet gums.
Madie McFarland:Sweet gums, yep, were in the, planting list. I
Mike Bartlett:I don't know why. Because they're all If I didn't cut this grass, I'd have sweetgums all that.
Madie McFarland:Right. Right.
Mike Bartlett:Yeah. I believe they grow on the other side of the moon. I mean
Madie McFarland:They are. They're some of the first to volunteer. But you're making some really excellent, points, mister Bartlett, because you're right. We could just let the field go fallow and let natural succession take over and over time end up with, a very similar outcome as if, we were actively planting.
Mike Bartlett:But It would take longer.
Madie McFarland:It would take longer. But because this program is, not just for carbon sequestration but also to benefit wildlife, and natural resources, we wanna be intentional about what we're putting out there. And so we do design our planting list to be tailored towards the site itself, the ecoregion. We take into account the soils, the hydrology for the area, and we'll take into account what species are occurring in existing stands that surround the property. But even so, we still have to balance that with the carbon side of things.
Madie McFarland:So you mentioned the sweet gum, which is a great example. So
Mike Bartlett:They grow fast.
Madie McFarland:They grow fast. They
Jerad Henson:biomass is what we're going
Mike Bartlett:for.
Madie McFarland:Exactly. So we try for about a sixty forty split between hard and soft mass. And, you know, we really want on both ends those species to provide some type of benefit to wildlife, oaks for acorns, up pecans, hickories, persimmon, and maple. But we also throw in the sweet gums from time to time, trees like that that we know are going to be faster growing to help us meet our carbon sequestration goals.
Mike Bartlett:I don't believe you planted any hickories on me.
Madie McFarland:No. Not and I don't believe on this site we did. But, you know, each site is a bit different. So some sites we might have hickory, some sites we might not. But, yeah, you're right.
Madie McFarland:I don't think we put any hickories on yours.
Jerad Henson:It's 13 different species, I think, that did go in.
Madie McFarland:Anywhere from 10 to 13.
Mike Bartlett:I got a list of them on my own. Yeah. Yeah.
Jerad Henson:And it's, yeah, it's it's an oak heavy
Madie McFarland:Mhmm. Mix. It's an oak heavy.
Jerad Henson:It does mimic some of the WRE mixes. Correct? Right. And so which is which that mix is designed to support wildlife, and that's a big part of that. That's why we we went with that.
Jerad Henson:Plus, we're going for all those broad wildlife benefits. And if we just went in, like, for carbon, it'd probably be best if we just stuck cottonwoods in the ground. Right? Because they're gonna grow fast. Yeah.
Jerad Henson:Well, that that doesn't have a lot of wildlife benefit. Right? We're looking we're looking for a long term game and and those multiple benefits, and I think that's highlighting why we went down that road and tried to establish that variety of tree species early on. Mister Bartlett, you mentioned this farm. You've been farming.
Jerad Henson:It's it's a 700 acre farm roughly?
Mike Bartlett:No. It's about 1,800 acres.
Jerad Henson:Acres. Okay. How long have y'all had that?
Mike Bartlett:My great grandfather bought it about 1868, '60 '70, somewhere along
Jerad Henson:in there. Okay. Wow.
Mike Bartlett:Yeah. He was a surgeon in the civil war. Yeah. He he was captured and sent to Illinois into a prison camp. Mhmm.
Mike Bartlett:Mountain City, I think it was and they employed him as a doctor there. He escaped, but they captured him again.
Madie McFarland:Oh, wow.
Mike Bartlett:And he went right back to
Madie McFarland:Such bad luck. And
Mike Bartlett:then when of course, he he wasn't repatriated until the war ended. But he my wife did a sort of a study of him. He did something which I found amusing. He petitioned the Confederate government, I suppose, to for back pay. He said, was captured, but I was still in the army.
Mike Bartlett:You didn't pay me. But they probably paid him in Confederate money, which did him no good anyway. But anyway, he he was from, near Holly Springs, Red Tonic, and he traveled through here. Mhmm. And, I think he met a girl.
Mike Bartlett:That's the reason
Madie McFarland:you might upset me here.
Mike Bartlett:But anyway, he he's he he acquired part of this land. He and about he bought all the place in about maybe two or three purchases. The last of which was about 1890 or something like that. Most of way your trees are, you know, the west end of the place, it's he bought later.
Jerad Henson:Really? Mhmm. That's awesome. I mean, that's that's a lot of history on this piece of ground and
Mike Bartlett:Yeah. Well, then that we bought some land to to the southeast of here, three twenty, three and twenty acres which that was in the late sixties. But then he had other land, but I have I have a sister, a sibling. And so when we I wanted this place. You know?
Mike Bartlett:So when before she died, we split up, and she got a lot of the other land, and I got this. Mhmm. And she wasn't interested in farming, so she didn't care. Yeah. So anyway but I wanted to ask a question about the ducks.
Mike Bartlett:Do you think any of this will benefit waterfowl?
Madie McFarland:I think that flyaway forest can provide direct benefits to waterfowl, especially if we are reforesting areas around existing wetlands. We are reforesting areas in the lower elevations of, the MAV where we know there's intermittent flooding, particularly in the spring and summer. But folks who are familiar with Bottomland Hardwoods and the Mississippi Alluvial Valley know that there is an elevation gradient within that ecoregion. And so some some of the sites that we enroll in the program on the on the higher end of the elevation, these might not be as, quote, unquote, ducky as some of our other projects.
Mike Bartlett:I wouldn't think so.
Madie McFarland:But
Jerad Henson:Fantastic wood duck habitat. Yeah. Like, there's the creek streams. Yes. There's the hardwood saw some wood ducks in the past.
Jerad Henson:Mhmm.
Mike Bartlett:But I pointed out I don't know if I told you guys, but I on most of those bottoms, I had irrigation. Yes. And I got pipes coming out of these reservoirs. And, you know, forty years down the road or thirty years down the if you guys want to flood them, you could.
Madie McFarland:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Madie McFarland:And it's something that we have to balance, with this being a carbon program. It it's different from what Ducks Unlimited is known for from what we traditionally do. There are certainly restrictions associated with the carbon market and the carbon registry, and one of those things is that the registry does not allow intentional flooding of the reforested areas. So
Jerad Henson:During the life of the carbon.
Madie McFarland:During the life of the carbon.
Mike Bartlett:Which is forty years.
Madie McFarland:Yes. Thank you for clarifying.
Jerad Henson:Just to clarify that.
Mike Bartlett:Yes. So I was I'm a past member of American Fire Association, and they did an article that I remember reading some years ago where, they studied flooded timber. This only flooded in the winter, of course. Yes. And they said it it it enhanced the growth of the trees.
Mike Bartlett:It didn't it didn't hurt them.
Madie McFarland:Yeah. Yeah. And we we with with the carbon registry restricting, intentional flooding, we, of course, understand that, there are things outside of our control, like seasonal intermittent flooding. Those things are totally allowable because who who can control that? And we hope that when that flooding is occurring, it's occurring either in the winter or in the spring, these natural seasonal inundations that bottomland hardwoods are characteristic of.
Madie McFarland:What what we need to look out for is prolonged water sitting on those trees during the growing season.
Mike Bartlett:Oh, no. He don't
Madie McFarland:see that. And that and that's really why the carbon registry restricts intentional artificial flooding. And that's why we have to work extra hard to design our restoration activities and our site selection so that we can try to make this program as wetland and duck friendly as we possibly can while also balancing the restrictions of the carbon registry. So, yeah, there's something else that you had mentioned, mister Bartlett,
Madie McFarland:that I
Madie McFarland:wanted to follow-up on, and I'm losing I've lost my train of thought, to be honest.
Mike Bartlett:You're not you're not old enough. I do that all the
Madie McFarland:time. Well,
Jerad Henson:you mentioned you've had this for I mean, you said eighteen nineties was kinda the last acquisition of that larger branch. But you've been it's row crop. There's forest. There's grazing. There's little bit of everything.
Mike Bartlett:A lot of it was patchy Mhmm. Smaller fields. My father, when he came back here in thirties Yeah. My mother's family was the one that owns this land. He he started clearing up some of these creek bottoms, and then I continued that, bought a bulldozer, took out then made big big fields out of the little fields.
Mike Bartlett:And, now put it all back into trees again. And and I've gotten a lot of ribbon from the locals, you know, about my my ancestors are gonna curse me.
Jerad Henson:Well well, your ancestors knowing the the row crop markets right now are probably going that may not been a bad decision.
Mike Bartlett:So Not not too bad an idea. Right?
Jerad Henson:Well, and speaking of that, in the row crop side, what what were you growing? What was your primary
Mike Bartlett:crop? Primarily cotton and corn.
Jerad Henson:Cotton and corn.
Mike Bartlett:Some beans, but not I wasn't crazy about soybeans.
Jerad Henson:Right.
Mike Bartlett:And then in the past, we grew some grains over mallow maize. Mhmm. And then wheat. Right. But the the really good creek bottom land, it was primarily just cotton and corn.
Jerad Henson:Cotton corn.
Mike Bartlett:And you
Jerad Henson:mentioned that you've been in the the gin industry Yeah. For the gin
Mike Bartlett:for while as before. Well. Running the gin, basically. I believe I was born in the gin.
Jerad Henson:Yeah. So those are the markets. Those are the crops that you had here, and and you've put most do you have any row crop left?
Mike Bartlett:I've got about on this on the east side of this road here, Homeplace Road, we've got about a 136 acres left of of row crop.
Jerad Henson:Okay.
Mike Bartlett:It used it originally had about 650
Madie McFarland:Right.
Mike Bartlett:Total, you know, bottomland Mhmm. Real crops. And then but two of the about a 100 acres of that of the row crop on east of here, I gave that to my son for pasture. Gotcha. You know, for for his meat business.
Mike Bartlett:Right. Graze his cattle on it. But and then he has some hogs on it too. But he he has pastured pork. He doesn't Right.
Mike Bartlett:He doesn't confine them.
Jerad Henson:Oh, yeah. I've I've I've partaken. Yeah. I got a pork butt from him in one of my first first site visits after we came up here. Yeah.
Jerad Henson:I will say it was probably the best piece of pork I've ever cooked. And I'm you know, I live in Memphis. Pork is king. Like like, it was a really good piece of pork. Yeah.
Jerad Henson:Like a 13 pound pork butt.
Mike Bartlett:They're they're really pasture raised too because often. At least once a month, sometimes we're often we got yards full of pigs here. I
Jerad Henson:saw them outside the the store. Yeah. Just a minute ago.
Mike Bartlett:They they just wander around everywhere. They're fairly easy to get up. And my wife gets after them with a broom when they
Madie McFarland:But I I think that your your land and your involvement with the program and this partnership that we have with your family is a really great example of how you can enroll into conservation programs and still be able to have alternative uses on that property, still be able to farm, produce livestock. These things can occur together and sometimes in harmony. So I think I think your property is a really neat example of that.
Mike Bartlett:Oh, I'm we we feel that way too. We're real happy with it.
Madie McFarland:Good. I'm glad to hear that.
Jerad Henson:Well, and you mentioned I was gonna say, you mentioned that you heard about us from word-of-mouth from mister Jake McFadden
Mike Bartlett:Yeah. He told me about it.
Jerad Henson:Who we did some some work on his ground as well. What was it that was the most attractive thing for our program? What was it that caught you?
Madie McFarland:I caught
Jerad Henson:your eye.
Mike Bartlett:As I said to you earlier, maybe we didn't record this. I have I'm a traditional tree hugger, so I like the idea. And I've I've planted a lot of trees. You see these cypresses out here? Mhmm.
Mike Bartlett:I planted all of those, and I planted a lot of poplar, tulip poplar and some oak, mostly cherry bark.
Madie McFarland:Yeah.
Mike Bartlett:It was about a little 15 acre field right to the south of here that I planted. Mhmm. All in hardwood And it was just a irregularly shaped field. It was difficult to farm. And I had it in hay and then I said, I got plenty of hay ground.
Mike Bartlett:So I just it was close to the house so I wanted it in woods. And I think that's very thick. You know? I'm sure this will be that way too. Does it eventually set itself thin?
Jerad Henson:Or It will. It'll shade. Yep. It'll it'll self thin through the shading that close can
Mike Bartlett:process. Yeah. And it's always I mean, there's no weed growth on the ground or anything like it. It's it's like a forest. Forest.
Mike Bartlett:Right. But I'm sure this other will be the same. But how long does it take to get those trees up to get some shade?
Jerad Henson:It depends upon the plant planting and spacing and I was gonna say. Trees start with, but, Maddie, you'd probably be more
Madie McFarland:It also depends on the species. But, you know, most I believe that around year twenty is when most prescriptions may start suggesting, you know, going in there and doing some small thinning. But then really it's at the thirty to forty year mark where most folks are doing their precommercial thinning. But in terms of, you know, getting to that height to where they start shading other species out or shading themselves out, like Jared's saying, it's so dependent on the species, soil conditions, hydrology, things like that.
Mike Bartlett:And weather. You know?
Madie McFarland:Yeah. And weather.
Jerad Henson:The weather.
Madie McFarland:Oaks tend to be a little bit slower growing. Like we were saying earlier, you know, those cottonwoods, the sweet gums, they can jump up fast.
Mike Bartlett:Well, I was surprised the sycamores are so prevalent out there.
Madie McFarland:We noticed when we came in April to do the first survival monitoring, we noticed few sycamores in the creek beds, and so we have to assume that's probably
Mike Bartlett:Oh, sure.
Madie McFarland:You know, where they're coming from. But, yeah, sycamores, cottonwood, sweetgums, oh, they're so prolific.
Mike Bartlett:Any cottonwoods on this? No. I don't see many cottonwoods on this.
Madie McFarland:No. We we see them in other areas, but, yeah, you mostly had. In terms of volunteer species, there were sycamores. There were sweetgums and some elm too.
Mike Bartlett:Oh, yeah.
Madie McFarland:Yeah. And some elm.
Mike Bartlett:Few elms, but not not many. Yeah. Predominantly oak. Yes. Predominantly.
Mike Bartlett:These natural woods that we have are are mostly oak. Mhmm.
Madie McFarland:Yes.
Mike Bartlett:Mostly red oak.
Madie McFarland:Yes,
Mike Bartlett:the red oak family. Not as many white oaks, unfortunately. That's the one that's my favorite. But anyway.
Madie McFarland:And that's the type of information, you know, we consider when we're putting together the species list. You know, we do have a somewhat standard, if you will, you know, list of species that are pretty common in our mixes, but we do try to tailor it from site to site, you know, what makes sense for this ego region and what makes sense to mix with the existing mature forest that you have here so that we are, creating contiguous swaths of, habitat that, coincides together, makes sense to be together.
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Jerad Henson:When you decided to sign up and and jump into this program with DU, how much of that decision I know it was a big family decision with you because we met with your family when we did that sign up and and came up and did our first thing. And how much did that, the fact that Marshall was more interested in a grazing program and not really, I guess, not not as interested in row crop farming?
Mike Bartlett:Oh, no. He didn't wanna be a he didn't wanna be a row crop.
Jerad Henson:So Not really at all. Uh-huh.
Mike Bartlett:I think he he was he studied environmental science in college. So as did our oldest daughter
Madie McFarland:Mhmm.
Mike Bartlett:Who you met. They were excited about it. I mean all three of the children were were fine with it. No. They didn't offer any objections.
Mike Bartlett:They were excited about it and just as as much as we were. So, I mean, it was no no brainer for us. We we really wanted to do it.
Jerad Henson:Well, good. And that was that's something that kind of I wanted to highlight is the fact that not just you, but your entire family is very environmentally and conservation minded. I mean Extremely. You know, you've got one daughter that's that works at Land Trust, and Marshall does sustainable ag here. And and so it all kinda comes together.
Jerad Henson:And what's really cool, as Maddie mentioned, this program worked with all of that in a way. Right? It made sense. And so that was something I wanted to get across to our listeners is that it was a big family decision on kinda why you did that, and and it made sense, and it works out with the direction you were wanting to go with your legacy. And you still have the farm and you're getting payment.
Jerad Henson:That's a good thing.
Mike Bartlett:Oh, yeah. That that that was I won't say it was the deciding factor, but it it was it certainly sweetened the the part because I because I was gonna be deprived of income.
Madie McFarland:Right.
Madie McFarland:Yeah. But By taking your land out of production. Yeah.
Mike Bartlett:And so I couldn't get anything from now I still lease it out for hunting rights, but the income from hunting basically just pays the land taxes, you know, which is fine.
Jerad Henson:That's right.
Mike Bartlett:Yeah. The yeah. The I won't I don't wanna seem like I'm grasping, but the money was nice.
Madie McFarland:No. No.
Jerad Henson:Well, I mean, it it made financial sense. Yeah. I think that's
Mike Bartlett:what I'm
Jerad Henson:trying to say. Right. We're not saying grasping by any means, but it was a business decision too.
Madie McFarland:Right.
Mike Bartlett:Right?
Jerad Henson:But it was decision that seems like made you feel pretty good about it too.
Mike Bartlett:Very. It had a very strong emotional quotient.
Madie McFarland:Good. Yeah. Well, that's
Jerad Henson:that's awesome. We love to hear that.
Madie McFarland:Yeah.
Jerad Henson:That's why we go to work every day. Yeah. And so I think one of the things I wanted to talk about, I'm a put put you on the spot with Maddie here, but how has it been to work with DU's field staff?
Mike Bartlett:Oh, you guys have been great.
Madie McFarland:I I know. Thank god.
Mike Bartlett:I've been of course, my first experiences were with Lauren.
Madie McFarland:Yes.
Mike Bartlett:And and we love her. She's great. And she said something amusing when she wrote me about you coming here. She said, you're gonna like Maddie much more than you do, ma'am. I'm too much of a northeaster.
Mike Bartlett:And and I came back and said, hey. You know, I got a daughter and grandchildren who are northeasters now. We got a house in Cooperstown, Upstate New York. Yeah.
Jerad Henson:Yeah. And the person we're talking to or talking about for our listeners because they don't know, that's Lauren Olliman. That's our carbon specialist. She's kinda been kind of the the mastermind behind this program and and really to her credit as as driving this partnership and program.
Mike Bartlett:She was my main contact and Nick Nick she and Nick Smith.
Madie McFarland:Yes.
Mike Bartlett:But Nick is retired on.
Madie McFarland:Yes. Nick Smith is retired. And Lauren just speaks so highly of y'all too. And despite what she says about her northeastern tendencies, she couldn't be nice.
Mike Bartlett:She's a sweetheart. Yeah.
Madie McFarland:We we we love her.
Jerad Henson:And Don't let her hear
Mike Bartlett:this. Oh,
Madie McFarland:I did recall what I wanted to say a little way back, and I do think it's important, for our listeners to hear, that, you know, in terms of the conversation we were having earlier about this being a bit of a different type of program for Ducks Unlimited and that, you know, in some areas, this program might provide more indirect than direct benefits to waterfowl as compared to some of our other conservation programs. But a really important facet of the Flyway Forest program is that we are not only generating or sequestering carbon, but we're also generating credits from those from that carbon sequestration, which eventually will be put out on the open market for sale. So we plan to generate revenue from the sale of these carbon credits that will then go back into Ducks Unlimited to fund not only this program, but our other wetland, and conservation work.
Mike Bartlett:How do how do carbon credits work? I'm not familiar I mean, I've read about it, but I don't understand.
Madie McFarland:I wish Lauren was here. Yeah. I, yeah. Lauren really is the brainchild behind this program. She has a mitigation background but is also our carbon specialist, and she comes from that world and can really speak the ecosystem services speak very fluently.
Mike Bartlett:Just speaking of carbon, though, I just you you estimate if a tree grows say half an inch in diameter a year Mhmm.
Jerad Henson:It's the biomass.
Mike Bartlett:That's so many pounds
Madie McFarland:Yes.
Jerad Henson:That's exactly right.
Mike Bartlett:Carbon and, you know, multiply, you know, trees per acre and you get a number.
Jerad Henson:Yeah. That's it.
Mike Bartlett:And then you can I looked up somewhere I think wood is about 50% carbon? Is that close to being right?
Jerad Henson:It can more than that, but Yeah. Yeah. It's it's significant that a lot of that biomass is carbon.
Mike Bartlett:Well, it's a car it's a carbohydrate, basically.
Jerad Henson:Yes. That's exactly right. So
Mike Bartlett:So the the hydrogen part is lighter and carbon atoms heavier. So right. But, anyway, that's how I imagined it. That's it. Yep.
Mike Bartlett:But no one can project forty years forward and tell me what it's gonna be worth, you know, down the road.
Jerad Henson:No. And I don't know the exact rates right now on the market. And and I will say this is a voluntary carbon market system. This is not any type of regulatory credits or anything like that. This is all voluntary.
Jerad Henson:This is people trying to do we're we're selling these credits to organizations, companies, corporations that are looking to increase their sustainability goal the way that they speak about how they impact nature. Right? And if they had a big carbon use, then then they want to try and maybe offset that before any regulatory actions are taken. Right? This is They're trying to ameliorate the That's it.
Jerad Henson:On their own on a voluntary basis.
Mike Bartlett:The carbon that they produce.
Jerad Henson:That's right. Mhmm. That's right. So and that's kinda how these markets go, and they go up and down, and they're they're crazy. But one of the reasons that I think that this prog program and I've been around long enough on this program because I actually started before Maddie started on this program.
Jerad Henson:I helped out with it a little bit with some landowner outreach as well as kinda just talking to the staff and educating them on some of that. So you've got that landowner outreach where you've got the the carbon side, but one of the things that DU does really well is land protection. Right? And so when you're trying to generate a carbon credit, you have to have carbon. Right?
Jerad Henson:You have to have the accumulated carbon in the ecosystem. But then when you wanna try and sell it, you have to say that that carbon's gonna be there in forty years. It's gonna so the durability. And one of the things that DU does since we're one of the largest land trusts in North America, we can put the easement on it. Right?
Jerad Henson:That regulatory easement that protects it and makes that credit durable. And that's a big part of why it makes sense. One of the other things I've mentioned, but yeah. It just came back to me. My magic moment came back now.
Jerad Henson:Was the fact that one of the cool things with DU is not like an NRCS easement. We're not quite as rigid as a federal easement. So forty years down the road, we've got a perpetual easement on this. You're not supposed to touch the trees for forty years. Well, now you say, forty years, the carbon program's over.
Jerad Henson:I wanna improve this for wildlife. I'd like to do a thinning. And as long as it's got a wildlife slant on it, Dee's gonna work with you to make quality habitat.
Mike Bartlett:Another thing to point out though is if you cut down a tree, a white oak tree, and make whiskey barrels, you've got that barrel is sequestered carpet. That's
Madie McFarland:true. Yep. That's true. That's true.
Madie McFarland:So Yeah.
Mike Bartlett:You know, it doesn't, you know, it doesn't go back into the atmosphere.
Jerad Henson:That's correct. That's correct. Right? If it's a if it's a wood product or something that's gonna be around. Yeah.
Jerad Henson:Yep. Yep. And the the those as Maddie mentioned, the the carbon creditors, Right? Those verification agencies. They're tricky in around the wetland side and things and the trees getting wet.
Jerad Henson:One of the weird things with with carbon and wetlands is is a methane issue and stuff, and so this allows us to kinda work around that. We are working. We are trying to put some science grants in and and to talk about getting to the bottom of what that actually looks like so we can look at that winter flooding that you mentioned, right, and how minimal those effects are, but someone's gotta quantify it first. But we have had conversations with those Yeah. Creating agencies and certification agencies about what they would need to approve that.
Jerad Henson:And so we are going down those roads. We're wanting to make these other financial markets available for good high quality waterfowl wildlife habitat.
Madie McFarland:Absolutely. And, you know, in terms of actually quantifying these credits, we worked with some great minds at Pachama early on during the pilot phase of the program. We partnered with them to well, for their carbon market and carbon development expertise. So there are some very, very smart people out there with some extremely complicated but sound models that can use the biomass and the change in biomass over time to quantify or try to estimate how much carbon has been sequestered, and that can then turn into a metric of carbon by ton, which gets us to being able to sell those credits at whatever the cost the market currently, you know, has per ton.
Mike Bartlett:Well, an acre of trees will have a lot of tons.
Madie McFarland:Yeah. That's exactly right. Yeah.
Mike Bartlett:And to set your mind to rest about flooding, I've been on this farm all my life. And I've seen it flood these creek bottoms maybe half a dozen times
Madie McFarland:Yeah. In Yeah.
Mike Bartlett:Sixty or seventy years. And it never stays on more than a few hours.
Jerad Henson:Right.
Mike Bartlett:You know, these creeks, there's not that much drainage area back upstream from us. And so it gets up and then it runs off really fast.
Madie McFarland:Yeah.
Mike Bartlett:Doesn't Yeah. Doesn't do much damage. Yeah.
Jerad Henson:So that's that's why. That's all perfectly fine. And we we like that, Rex. That's supporting habitat. That is that's good for the forest overall, those pulse floods.
Mike Bartlett:But And it probably puts some nutrients, I I don't know, yeah, on the in the soil.
Madie McFarland:Yeah. And that's all part of the evaluation process when, a landowner comes to us with interest or you submit an application. When we're evaluating, your site, we are thinking about flood frequency and things like that so that we can guarantee with some confidence the survival of the trees that we plant. Yeah. And and monitoring is an extremely important program or, excuse me, extremely important facet of the program.
Madie McFarland:Within the first five to seven years after we've planted those trees, we do annual survival monitoring in the spring so that we can not only quantify, you know, that change in biomass, but also understand if we are seeing die offs in some areas, if we're not seeing as much survival as we expected, or the trees are growing a little bit slower than we had expected. That's all information that we can keep tabs on and adjust. Well, adaptive management. We can adjust in real time either through supplemental planting, maybe there's additional chemical, application, but things like that. You know, we keep a close look on the survival of these trees in those early establishment years to make sure.
Mike Bartlett:Well, do you you when you checked last spring Yeah. You were not disappointed.
Madie McFarland:Oh, no. We were very happy with
Mike Bartlett:Oh, really?
Madie McFarland:Yes. You know, survival, can vary across the site, and you had some fields that were doing absolutely excellent, had no concerns about it, some areas where survival was a little bit less than others. But as a site, or as a whole, your site was performing very well, and we were really happy to see that.
Mike Bartlett:So what's considered what do you consider low or bad survival? Below 60% or something like
Madie McFarland:that? Our survival goal for Flyway Forest is 80% survival across our sites.
Jerad Henson:Which is really high.
Madie McFarland:It is.
Madie McFarland:That's pretty high. Yeah.
Mike Bartlett:Go. Go.
Madie McFarland:And that's that's why the survival monitoring is so important for this program because we do have a lofty success goal, but that 80 is what's gonna get us to our carbon sequestration goals.
Jerad Henson:And that's why there is a little bit of a preference for within the MAV, some of those little bit higher sites. Right? Because those trees don't get wet feet as much, and they're gonna have a little higher.
Mike Bartlett:So did you I I noticed one of the sites that you were enthusiastic about last spring was a pasture that was all a hill, you know, it was and you said you had very good survival, which surprised because we had a drought, you know.
Madie McFarland:Yes.
Mike Bartlett:And the the hills are much more drought susceptible than the creek bottoms. But you were happy with that, but you you didn't get as much in some of the sites in in the on the bottomland.
Madie McFarland:Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, there's a ton of different reasons that could be we did, of course, have the drought. You know, if those those bottomland areas are used to more inundation, regular inundation, you get hit with a drought, we might see a more severe response, you know, in those areas. Soils play a part in it.
Madie McFarland:And even the the the condition of the sapling before it's put in the ground, you know, that plays a big part in
Mike Bartlett:Oh, sure. I mean, there's gonna be a lot of variation.
Madie McFarland:I'm sure. Tons of variation. We were concerned about the drought, as you've mentioned.
Mike Bartlett:It was bad this year too.
Madie McFarland:Yes. Yeah. Was. Yeah.
Jerad Henson:It But wet early, and then it got real dry.
Mike Bartlett:Right. But so if they survive one year Mhmm. Are they more likely to survive the second day?
Madie McFarland:Every, yes. Every consecutive year, is just that much more of a guarantee that they are going to reach maturity.
Mike Bartlett:Put some more they put roots down deeper.
Madie McFarland:And Yeah. Those those first three years are really volatile. Anything can happen. So, you know, it's really around the year three mark that we will start considering what type of adaptive management might be needed. You know, we don't wanna make a gut reaction within those first three years before we fully understand why those trees did not perform as well or did not survive.
Madie McFarland:So, yeah, usually around, year three is when we're gonna start thinking about adaptive management activities.
Mike Bartlett:What you saw last year, no alarming diholes.
Madie McFarland:No. No, sir. Nothing alarming on your property. We noted the amount of volunteer species like the sycamores and the elm that were coming up. But like Jarrett mentioned earlier, eventually, there will be some self thinning
Mike Bartlett:that could that surprised me with that there were there were that many. Yeah. You know, it's a big number. You know?
Jerad Henson:It is.
Madie McFarland:Yep. It was. But it's great to see that much volunteer recruitment, to know that the trees wanna be here, and they can do well here.
Mike Bartlett:Well, then that's what's supposed to be here.
Madie McFarland:We left it all. Yeah. Exactly.
Mike Bartlett:I know, I, another thing that I benefit that I found that when I when I was farming this land, actually, you know, the greatest runoff is gonna be off of farmed land called we did no till, but still you get pretty and so your pipe structures, you know, where you control the erosion, your tail ditches run into the creeks, I was constantly having to repair those. And I don't anticipate any help to do that because I've I've read the charts when I took it first, of course. Runoff off of of farmland is the greatest. Off of grassland is the next lowest, but on forest, it's the lowest of all. The the speed of the runoff with the Right.
Jerad Henson:The trees are gonna slow it down and the roots soak it up. Yeah.
Mike Bartlett:They well, they hold it back. You know? And, so I don't anticipate having much trouble with these pipe structures. Yeah.
Madie McFarland:Well, that's a great benefit. What
Jerad Henson:while you're talking about that, have you seen any other benefits so far? Have you seen any wildlife benefits or anything like that?
Mike Bartlett:Seen lots of wildlife.
Jerad Henson:Really?
Mike Bartlett:But, you know, we've because I I leased this ground to some hunters and they're Mhmm. They're ecstatic about
Jerad Henson:it. I
Mike Bartlett:would be. And and because we always see a lot of deer. Mhmm. And you know, I haven't seen any, you know, lions or tigers or bears or anything. But we do we do see Yeah.
Mike Bartlett:Plenty of of deer.
Jerad Henson:Deer. Turkey?
Mike Bartlett:Oh, right. We covered up turkeys.
Jerad Henson:Really? Good.
Mike Bartlett:Yeah. They they like that the mast out of those trees too when they start producing.
Jerad Henson:And they like that cover right now coming up in those thickets. That's good.
Mike Bartlett:Yeah. Good. Talked to
Jerad Henson:one habitat.
Mike Bartlett:Guy, a friend of mine who was a surveyor, and he had he did some surveying. Well, we had to do it for this, you know. And he thought that it might bring back the bobwhite quail. I don't know if that's gonna be the case.
Jerad Henson:There's a lot of evidence actually because this is something we've talked about recently. There's a lot of evidence that in the at least in the first ten years, yes. But as that canopy starts to to close and the and it thins back out, it'll go back down. You know, the heydays in the the fifties and sixties of quail hunting kind of through the Mid South, a lot of that came from the fact that they just cleared everything, right, in the in the forties and fifties. Post World War two, bulldozers came through.
Jerad Henson:It was real easy to clear and and then everything some of that stuff got to grow back up thickets and it created this incredible quail habitat Well, they like for twenty, thirty years.
Mike Bartlett:They like edges. They do.
Jerad Henson:They do.
Mike Bartlett:And and, they also this was a strange I I you know, it's a great tragedy to me because I used to love to to quail hunting, they're just not anymore. My my son, Marshall, he saw a pair last Swipe up. Spring.
Madie McFarland:Oh, fantastic.
Mike Bartlett:But that's the first time I've seen any. But I noticed they would go on one evening walking back to our pickup through a cotton field. We were just walking down the rows. And it was twilight so we couldn't see and we busted about four cubbies out in the middle of that cotton field. They were roosting out there so I guess they figured to figure out the great big field like that that no wildlife was no predators were gonna bother them.
Jerad Henson:Out in the middle. Yeah. Well, that cotton still they can run around under that cotton. It's it's real bushy. But
Mike Bartlett:Yeah. But it was it had already been picked. You
Jerad Henson:know? Gotcha.
Mike Bartlett:But, but I can't imagine these fields now. I mean, they got
Jerad Henson:A lot easier to hide
Madie McFarland:out there. Oh my gosh.
Mike Bartlett:A lot easier. Yeah.
Jerad Henson:Yeah. I grew up my grandfather was a quail hunter. That was his his, his favorite thing to do. And I can say in the in this the hunting world, one of the prettiest places I've ever been is behind an English setter on a quail hunt
Madie McFarland:Oh, yeah. On point.
Jerad Henson:It's a pretty place. It's a really pretty site.
Mike Bartlett:Yeah. It's it's a it's a thrilling, a cubby burst, but and sadly, it's it's gone. But deer and turkey, when I was a child, there were no deer and turkey out here. None. We had you know, I had I was also a coon owner Okay.
Mike Bartlett:Which was to the despair of my mother. I remember coming in one night from a coon at four in the morning, and I had to get up and go to work the next morning. And she woke me up at six, and I was moaning, and I was not happy. And she said, get up out of that bed and go to work. I have never known a coon hunter who was worth a damn.
Jerad Henson:Well, you'll have lots of raccoons back too.
Mike Bartlett:My gosh. Well, we got we got plenty
Jerad Henson:of now. Yeah.
Mike Bartlett:Well, I
Jerad Henson:bet with the cattle operation and the pastured pork that they like to hang around that too.
Mike Bartlett:Oh, yeah? Oh my gosh. Yeah. Do they? And we're, we're getting one animal that I don't want, and that is the, wild pig.
Madie McFarland:Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Jerad Henson:You're getting feral hogs here now? Yeah. Yeah. Yep. That's all.
Mike Bartlett:They are they just feral domesticated hogs gone wild, or are they the old Razorback? Arkansas. You know? Yeah. Don't be pointing at the
Madie McFarland:Arkansas guy. He's he's a little sore right now after this
Mike Bartlett:past weekend. But tried Memphis Memphis State beat artists.
Jerad Henson:I'm a Memphis alum too, so I'm not I'm I'm a conflicted person. I don't think we need to put any of that on this podcast.
Madie McFarland:I'm having trouble.
Jerad Henson:Yeah. I think, Maddie, you might be able answer this better than me, but some are Yeah. Domesticated pigs that have have escaped and are feral. Some, I'm not gonna say they're wild, but they are a much older lineage of pigs that were released by Europeans early early on. So they've been feral or wild for a long time.
Jerad Henson:Yeah. So
Madie McFarland:Yeah. No. That that's right. That's what I was gonna say. I was going to mention, yeah, the European ancestors that brought over their variation.
Madie McFarland:I mean, well, you hear about it too with songbirds. You know, when we came to America and settled, our ancestors wanted things that reminded them of Europe, of homes.
Mike Bartlett:They brought them over.
Madie McFarland:Brought, yeah, brought them over. And, unfortunately, that has just become, such a prolific issue, and some of them are truly feral. Some are, domesticated livestock that have gotten out and are out there causing just as much havoc as
Mike Bartlett:I saw this has been ten, fifteen years ago. So an emu on this place. Emu. And I know that's not native. No.
Mike Bartlett:And it was I think people bought the and, you know, they had a it's kinda like a Ponzi scheme. You know, the first guy that gets into it makes a lot
Madie McFarland:of money and stuff. Yeah.
Mike Bartlett:And then everybody gets emus, and then they turn them loose.
Madie McFarland:So I
Jerad Henson:don't know
Madie McFarland:what to
Mike Bartlett:do with one. Been released. Okay. And, it was strange seeing that. I was driving down the pickup, running my pickup down the road.
Mike Bartlett:It was spring. I had the windows down, and he was running beside the pickup. And I wanted to see how fast he could go. And he hit about 30 miles an hour. I mean, I could not believe.
Jerad Henson:That's getting it.
Mike Bartlett:I was looking out the right window, and he he was just pacing along, and he all a sudden, he just turned and looked at me. Just looked, and he freaked me out.
Madie McFarland:I imagine saying that's definitely not something you'd expect to see out here. Sounds like somebody had a an exotic operation, lost some of their stock.
Jerad Henson:Well, as we're as we've hit most of the questions that I wanted to go through, but a couple questions I really want to get to towards the end here. If you were recommending this program or this project to other landowners or your neighbors, you know, what would you tell
Madie McFarland:them?
Mike Bartlett:I already have. You know?
Jerad Henson:Good. That's that's that's amazing to hear. Thank you.
Mike Bartlett:I well, course, I tried to get my neighbor, Bob, to sign up, and he may eventually do it if y'all keep the program alive. But another friend of mine who I grew up with, and we play bridge together every Tuesday, and he asked me about it. And I gave him as much detail as I could, and I I didn't follow-up with him to know if he tried to follow-up with you guys, but I gave him Lauren's number. And the guy in Jackson, the lawyer Josh. Josh.
Mike Bartlett:Yeah. Josh.
Madie McFarland:Yep.
Mike Bartlett:But whether he I I need to ask him that the next time I see him because he's he expressed an interest in it.
Jerad Henson:Well, awesome.
Mike Bartlett:Uh-huh.
Jerad Henson:So you've had a good experience. Yeah. And that's awesome. I think one of our our biggest questions, do you feel like you're making a difference by reforesting, like, to the whole landscape?
Madie McFarland:Do feel like this program
Mike Bartlett:is Absolutely. You know, it's making I'm, you know, back to nature. You know, it's it's kinda
Jerad Henson:It's kinda nice to work with mother nature to
Mike Bartlett:fight mother nature. And I I like the idea that we're gonna have a lot more wildlife. I don't know if I want any panthers, but I know? Okay. Okay.
Jerad Henson:Maybe a bear,
Madie McFarland:but No. No.
Mike Bartlett:No. We may get those. You know? You may. Well, they there's lots
Jerad Henson:of rumors around here.
Mike Bartlett:They've seen them as as close as like Sledge, Mississippi, which is about 20 miles Yeah. Of here. They've I don't know how they get they came from Arkansas. I think they crossed the rivers.
Jerad Henson:Yeah. And the river the between the levees has a bunch of bears too. Yeah. Like like but, you know, I think Mississippi used to be kinda the bear state.
Mike Bartlett:Oh, yeah. A lot
Jerad Henson:of bears. It's, you know, it's kinda cool. It's it's a very charismatic animal to to show that that there's potential for that to come back and for that wildlife and
Mike Bartlett:Well, the honeybee farmers, I mean, don't like them, you know,
Jerad Henson:because they
Mike Bartlett:they bust up bust up their eyes.
Madie McFarland:Well, that's understandable. But
Mike Bartlett:my daughter, May, is up in of course, she's up in Upstate New York where she's seen all kind of bear scat and bear tracks
Madie McFarland:Yeah. You know,
Jerad Henson:on the
Mike Bartlett:land that she looks at.
Jerad Henson:There's a bunch of bears.
Mike Bartlett:She's never encountered a bear, but they're they're black bears. Right. They're not the the dangerous kind. Right.
Madie McFarland:They did just call her a record breaking black bear in Mississippi. I believe that was earlier this year or late last year in the Delta, record breaking for its size. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, was I can't remember its weight off the top of my head, but just from the pictures alone.
Mike Bartlett:They get up 300 pounds, don't they?
Madie McFarland:It was a massive
Madie McFarland:400. Yeah.
Madie McFarland:Yeah. Yeah. And it broke the state record for the largest black bear they had ever collared or at least had on record. That's cool. Yeah.
Madie McFarland:And that was just earlier, I believe earlier this year.
Jerad Henson:And that's one of the species that will benefit from this. Right? Is that
Mike Bartlett:Oh, heavens. Yes.
Jerad Henson:I mean that native black bear too.
Mike Bartlett:Yeah. Yeah. They all like that. And then and then, of course of course, the coyotes, they're kind of invasive, I think. They they weren't here.
Mike Bartlett:Well, maybe I know, but I never saw them as a child. But
Madie McFarland:Their populations are certainly doing
Jerad Henson:And you're doing
Mike Bartlett:And you hear you hear them howling.
Jerad Henson:Yeah.
Mike Bartlett:And my son has a compost pile where he puts the awful Mhmm. Be and he mixes it with just organic matter. Mhmm. It's basic these guys had trim trees
Madie McFarland:Mhmm.
Mike Bartlett:And grind up the he's made a deal with them. They just dump on him. Gotcha. Takes it out there. He goes, that's just a feast for cattle.
Madie McFarland:Yeah. And
Jerad Henson:That's probably why you're hearing a bunch
Mike Bartlett:of them.
Madie McFarland:Oh my god. We
Mike Bartlett:when Meg my wife Meg was a city girl and when we she first moved down there with me, we were right on this porch. Well, I think I was in the basement. I had a saw down. I was doing some woodwork. She came tearing down the stairs and she'd heard her first bunch of coyotes.
Mike Bartlett:And, really, she was freaked out.
Jerad Henson:She's a little shaken
Madie McFarland:up. She thought
Mike Bartlett:she'd moved to the wilderness. Because she's gotten used to it now. She's paying
Madie McFarland:attention. It's a beautiful place to get used to.
Mike Bartlett:Yeah. Yeah. We we like it.
Jerad Henson:Oh, it's a beautiful place out here. It is. Well, as we start to kinda wrap up, Maddie, do you have anything else you kinda wanna finish with?
Madie McFarland:I would just encourage landowners if you are looking for an alternative program for your land. Maybe you are considering getting out of row crop agriculture, maybe you wanna get out of grazing, and you're looking for something that's a little bit different, that's going to allow you to still use your land in multiple ways to meet your recreation and your management goals, make a little money off of it, and contribute to the long term stewardship of our bottomland hardwood forest, I would strongly encourage you to look us up at Flyway Forest, at our website, on Ducks Unlimited, and consider reaching out to one of us. We would love to talk to you about our program, how it fits on your property, and what that type of partnership looks like. So please reach out if you're interested.
Jerad Henson:We'll put the contact info down in the description. Mister Mike, as always, it's wonderful to talk to you and and hear your stories and and your passion for and the environment in this farm. It's it's you so much for joining us
Mike Bartlett:It's a win win for for me. That's awesome. Yeah. I'll be loving it.
Jerad Henson:Well, we're so glad that we could talk to you. Mhmm. We gotta say thank you to to Matty and and mister Mike for joining us on on our podcast today. I'm gonna thank, Chris Isaac, our podcast producer, because he's gonna have a lot of work to do cleaning me up on this. And we always gotta thank the listeners.
Jerad Henson:Thank y'all for tuning in. Hopefully, was an episode that y'all really enjoyed, something a little different, and and you can learn a little bit about some of the other things that Ducks Unlimited is doing, and the creative ways we're we're trying to partner with landowners to to create high quality, waterfowl and wildlife habitat. So thanks for tuning in, and we'll catch y'all on the next one.
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