Game and Parks Field Office Set to Establish Wildlife Habitat

If Katherine Crawley has her way, wildlife in the area will flourish under her work.

Since May, Crawley, a wildlife biologist with the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, has been introducing herself to landowners in the southern Panhandle, out of a new Game and Parks field office in Sidney.

Her mission: to help landowners provide or improve wildlife habitat from Scottsbluff, over to Garden County and points south of that line.

While she can work with different sorts of wildlife projects, Crawley's position rose mainly, and focuses on, a state initiative that looks to increase opportunities for pheasant hunting across Nebraska. Identified as one of the areas with high potential for pheasant opportunities, Sidney got the nod for the field office, "because it's pretty much in the middle of one of the areas with the most suitable habitat," Crawley said.

Since arriving, Crawley has worked with the Sidney Natural Resources and Conservation Service (NRCS) and Farm Service Agency (FSA) offices, identifying suitable land for her work. That's handy also because the Game and Parks field office is in the USDA Service Center in the 2200 block of Jackson St. in Sidney. Her office is between the NRCS and FSA offices.

Crawley has several Game and Parks programs at her disposal that can pay landowners for maintaining or providing certain types of habitat, such as tall wheat stubble. At the same time, many of those programs also allow hunters to use the properties, usually on a walk-in basis.

Game and Parks Open Fields and Waters Program has for years been available to interested landowners, but Crawley hopes that and other programs will grow thanks to the Sidney field office - the first believed to have been opened in this area.

Crawley said Game and Parks has a number of strong partnerships with wildlife and natural resources organizations that allow for a multitude of possibilities. Some of those include Ducks Unlimited, Pheasants Forever, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Nebraska Land Trust, Nebraska Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife.

With those partnerships Crawley can, for instance, help rehabilitate a wetland if that's what the landowner wants. It doesn't matter what the use, whether for hunting, wildlife viewing, or just because the landowner wants to provide for wildlife.

"We look at their (landowner) goals and objectives and what kind of habitat they have," she said. "We want to help people achieve their goals while putting out the best habitat we can."

That desire to help wildlife goes back to Crawley's childhood. A product of 4-H, she was a young lady hooked on animals. She remembers fondly the trips to a friend's pig farm. National Geographics, nature shows, and trips to the St. Louis Zoo helped fuel the interest. But Crawley was hooked, she said, when she got a handbook on reptiles from her grandfather that she just couldn't put down.

She thought briefly about being a veterinarian, but then realized her was more a call of the wild. "I wanted to work with wildlife."

After college, Crawley got another test of her long-term outlook when she worked for the United States Geological Survey on the wildlife portion of a project protecting the central Platte River in Nebraska, followed by performing hunter surveys in the Rainwater Basin for UNL. She also worked for a firm out of Lincoln known for its habitat work.

But none of those matched up with the opportunity afforded her by Game and Parks.

"I wanted to be a wildlife biologist," Crawley said, her facing lighting up to the question if she's found her place.