By Nick Simonson

Continuing recent uptrends, the North Dakota Game & Fish Department’s (NDG&F) Private Lands Section added nearly 45,000 acres of public access to its Private Land Open to Sportsmen program (PLOTS) ahead of the fall 2026 hunting season.  With a goal set in 2023 of returning to 1 million or more PLOTS acres on the landscape by 2030, NDG&F Private Lands Section Leader Kevin Kading explains that the department is well on track to meet that mark, sitting at 925,000 acres this season.

“Going into fall of 2026, I think we have some things to be excited for. It’s looking to be a nice increase in the amount of acres in the program once again. Last year we hit about 40,000 new acres and it looks like we’ve reached about 45,000 new acres this year,” Kading stated, adding about the 1 million acres PLOTS goal, “we reset that goal here about three years ago, and have been incrementally reaching 40,000 acres as a goal every year, so we set out every year with that in mind. We set each of our private lands biologists out in the field, they have a certain amount of dollars to work with, and then we do a lot of promotion, a lot of outreach, and a lot of knocking on doors.”

Those efforts have resulted not only in exceeding the 40,000 acre benchmark this year, but also in a backlog of interested parties looking to add PLOTS access and habitat to their operations which will carry into the new year. As a result, hunters will find more grass and wetland acres associated with PLOTS lands this fall, as the department has been focused on adding increased quality of hunting opportunities with each tract added to the program.  Working with landowners and partner groups throughout the state, such as non-government organizations and local soil conservation districts, NDG&F agents are able to identify stretches that can be converted back to habitat in marginal acres on a piece of property or be rehabilitated to provide better cover for wildlife including deer, pheasants and waterfowl.  One such program with Ducks Unlimited restored over 100 acres of wetlands in the state, a number the agency hopes to build on, according to Kading.

“We partnered up with Ducks Unlimited on a nice project that we have not really done a lot of before, but that’s for wetland restorations. Ducks Unlimited received an Outdoor Heritage Fund grant and then they worked with us to do some wetland restorations on PLOTS tracts and I’m happy to report that they were able to work with our staff and we secured 100 acres of new wetland restorations.  That doesn’t sound like a lot in the grand scheme of things, but 100 acres of restored wetlands is a pretty big deal and along with those acres there’s other acres associated with it for access and additional habitat,” Kading explains.

It’s through those partnerships that landowners, farmers, ranchers, hunters and others looking to add habitat to their properties can find the programs that best fit their operations and provide the biggest bump to their bottom line.  Oftentimes, programs can be layered on top of one another, adding two or more habitat and access options that all provide stipends to keep the retirement process competitive with farming those marginal acres which often don’t produce a reliable, profitable crop for the costly inputs such as seed, spray, and field work that are put into them.

“We’ve teamed up with a couple different partners, Pheasants Forever being one of them through their PATH [Public Access to Habitat] program.  They’ve added additional incentives on top of PLOTS to develop new habitat so that’s been a really good partnership that’s helped to move the needle and get some new grass enrolled in the program to help people kind of get over the fence on that,”  Kading states of the layered incentives, adding, “another thing I’ll put a plug in for is the Dakota Legacy Initiative. That’s a website that is meant to be a one stop shop for landowners. They can go there and search by a county, they can search by program, they can search by agency or partner, and they can find information about available programs,” he concludes on finding the wide array of options for operators looking to boost their income via habitat programs in North Dakota.

More information on the PLOTS program, including maps and rules of use of those private acres open to hunters this fall can be found online at gf.nd.gov/plots/guide.  Programs available through the NDG&F to operators can be reviewed at gf.nd.gov/private-lands/landowner-programs. For more information on statewide partner habitat programs, landowners can visit dakotalegacyinitiative.com.

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

Featured Photo: This year PLOTS added 45,000 acres of private lands open to public hunting in North Dakota. The NDG&F has a goal of providing 1 million acres to hunters by 2030.