By Nick Simonson

The North Dakota Pheasants Forever (ND PF) organization received a grant worth more than $1 Million in the most recent round of funding from the state’s Outdoor Heritage Fund (OHF).  This money will be offered to landowners looking to plant habitat for wildlife on their property and grant access to it for hunters via the Private Land Open to Sportsmen (PLOTS) program coordinated by the North Dakota Game & Fish Department in conjunction with the ND PF Public Access to Habitat (PATH) initiative, according to Emily Spolyar, ND PF State Coordinator.

“Thankfully the [OHF] board members saw value in our application and chose to fully fund it, which really speaks to what our chapters and members and staff do on the ground.  We wouldn’t be awarded dollars like this without that foundation of trust and that on the ground delivery,” Spolyar notes.  

The PATH program began two years ago in South Dakota, when concerned hunters organized to find a new way to incentivize landowners to enroll their acres in habitat initiatives at the state and federal level, and then open them up to public hunting each fall.  Thanks to generous support by the onX company, noted for its hunting map application, PF chapters and others were able to leverage their money with corporate donations from that source and others to sponsor more habitat acres coming back onto the landscape.  This three-pronged effort of non-government organizations, businesses, and state wildlife agencies working together opened thousands of acres in the first year of the program in the Rushmore State.  It’s a roll out that Spolyar believes will be supercharged in North Dakota thanks to the grant received from OHF.

“We’re excited to have partnered with onX for our national PATH program as well as receiving support from them for our ND PATH program. So dollars we receive for corporate partnerships for the PATH program help us to deliver acres in the short term as well as planning for the next phases of this program, because it’s always that cycle of ‘okay, we got this, now what’s next,” and trying to look down the road and plan for future opportunities and how we can continue to do more and make the most out of every dollar we’re receiving,” Spolyar states.

With limited acres in conservation programs in comparison to 20 years ago, commodity prices for crops such as corn and soybeans being at or near all-time highs, and more than 92 percent of North Dakota’s lands being privately owned, the push for more habitat has run up against a roadblock in recent years in North Dakota.  In fact, many estimates suggest that by 2027, more than 85 percent of the lands idled by landowners under the federal Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) in the state back in 2007 will be back in production.  It is hoped, however, that this new-found coalition and the shot in the arm of funding through OHF will help turn that tide and entice more landowners and operators to think habitat once again for those marginal and less productive areas they own. It’s also hoped that contact under the PATH banner with those landowners will generate up to 15,000 acres of new habitat and access in North Dakota by fall of 2026.

“We covered about two-thirds of the state with this funding. It’s more in the western two thirds of the state.  The goal is to get a portion of these acres on the ground in spring of 2026, so next spring; with hunting opportunities being open next fall.  It’s kind of a longer process with the habitat acres being involved because those acres typically don’t get planted until spring,” Spolyar explains.

The North Dakota PATH program will build off a pilot in Williams and Divide counties, carried out last year by the organization’s MonDak PF chapter in Williston. More information on the PATH program and its continuing rollout in South Dakota, North Dakota and throughout the upper Midwest can be found at pheasantsforever.org/PATH. North Dakota Pheasants Forever can be found on Facebook at facebook.com/NorthDakotaPF.

Simonson is the lead writer and editor of Dakota Edge Outdoors.

Featured Photo: More Shots Like This.  Thanks to a $1M grant from the ND OHF, the state’s Pheasants Forever chapters are helping to fund more PLOTS acres with more money for interested landowners looking to incorporate habitat into their operations. Simonson Photo.