DES MOINES – Winter weather can’t last forever. Despite the recent snow storm, Camping Kick-off Weekend is only a few short weeks away. Campers in an Iowa State Park during May 1, 2 and 3 will receive a gift package that includes a camping coupon good for one night of camping at an electrical site, a free issue of Iowa Outdoors magazine, recipes, camping tips and more in a reusable mesh trash bag.

The theme for Camping Kick-off Weekend is, be a green camper. The State Parks Bureau is proud to partner with Keep Iowa Beautiful and the DNR’s Land Quality Bureau to provide the reusable mesh trash bags.

DNR staff will be encouraging campers to make wise use of energy and water resources in the park and to be good stewards of their campsite; to leave their site clear of trash and to recycle what items they can.

From the IDNR

POLK CITY – The Iowa DNR Trails Program is hosting a workshop on how to make your own diesel fuel from used restaurant fryer oil from 9 a.m. to noon, April 7, at the Trails Building at Big Creek State Park, just north of Polk City. The workshop is open to everyone.
The workshop will discuss the Trails Program’s interest in “walking the walk” of protecting our natural resources and share how easy it is to produce biodiesel of this type for small fleet production or for home use.

Iowa DNR Director, Richard Leopold, along with other DNR staff will be on hand.

To find the Trails Building, do not turn right into the entrance of Big Creek State Park but head west across the bridge and turn left onto NW 125th Ave. Proceed a few hundred feet until you see mailboxes on the right and a park office sign on the right. Turn left down the drive of pine trees. Enter the compound where you will find the Trails Building just beyond the two park buildings you see as you enter. The Trails Building is a new brown building with a green roof. An AmeriCorps sign is in the window and the building number is 8796.
If you have difficulty finding the Trails Building, call 515-868-2593 or 515-250-2190.

###

PHOTOS OF BOOMING PRAIRIE CHICKENS: Prairie Spokesman -- A male greater prairie chickens displays on the booming ground at the Kellerton Bird Conservation Area. When pioneer settlers first arrived, the prairie chicken was Iowa's most abundant gamebird. As the state's vast prairies were broken and developed, the species declined and then vanished altogether. In 1987, the DNR began releasing live-trapped wild prairie chickens from Kansas onto grasslands in southern Iowa's Ringgold County. Descendents of those birds have survived to establish populations on both sides of the Iowa/Missouri border.


By Lowell Washburn
Iowa Department of Natural Resources

Regardless of what you’re doing right now, I want you to drop everything, go to your calendar, and circle Saturday, April 11. That’s the date for the sixth annual Greater Prairie Chicken Day at southern Iowa’s Kellerton Grasslands Bird Conservation Area near Mt. Ayr.

DES MOINES – The Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is looking for adventuresome volunteers to take part in the seventh annual Project AWARE (A Watershed Awareness River Expedition) river cleanup event.

This year’s expedition, scheduled for June 20-27, is expected to bring hundreds of volunteers to the Cedar River to clean it up from Center Point to Muscatine, a distance of nearly 86 miles. Volunteers participate by floating the river in a canoe or kayak and cleaning up river trash along the way. Opportunities for land based volunteers are also available. While the expedition lasts an entire week, volunteers may stay and help for as little or as long as they like.

Project AWARE combines river cleanup, recreation and education into a meaningful and rewarding experience for volunteers. Past participants have said that AWARE is one of the greatest ways for someone to connect with nature and make a difference in protecting it.

DES MOINES – A two-day symposium exploring the importance of wetland restoration and management will be held April 2-3 in Des Moines.
The agenda and registration for the symposium can be found at: http://www.iowadnr.gov/news/09mar/wetlands.html

“Wetlands have long been recognized for their value to wildlife, but it has only been in recent years that we’ve begun to understand the importance of wetlands in improving water quality for larger lakes and streams as well as reducing impacts from flooding,” said Tom Hadden, executive director of Metro Waste Authority in Des Moines.

One of the primary goals of the symposium is to explore options, both financially and socially, to restore wetland benefits for all parties concerned including agriculture and urban development. For instance, strategic use of state and federal conservation programs can assist landowners in maximizing unproductive land.

DES MOINES - The Iowa high school girls basketball tournament won’t crown the only state championship at the Iowa Events Center complex this weekend. More than 500 young archers from across the state will be competing as part of the National Archery in the Schools Program (NASP) state championships on Saturday at Veterans Memorial Auditorium as part of the Iowa Deer Classic.

I discovered something yesterday on the Iowa Outdoors home page and implemented a fix for it (PHP code change). It should cut the load time on the home page in half. I have plans to research other fixes to tune the code/database and improve performance from a software standpoint.

Unfortunately, there are still other problems that have to be fixed.

I will be coming in Sunday afternoon to work with our consultants to fix the IP issue for the long term fix. The site may go down for a little bit, but our redundancy plans should minimize that (if not eliminate it) possiblity.

We have some other problems that are less as important than the above, but need to happen behind the scenes to ensure redundancy/performance of Iowa Outdoors (and our other sites).

Just to make sure that everyone knows how important this is to us, I have spent many sleepless nights trying to fix these errors. It's not like I go home at 5 every day and forget about the issues happening here. My family will probably appreciate us fixing the problems the most. These problems snuck up on us and have been very difficult to come up with resolutions for.

To sum it all up, sorry we have the issues and hang in there, we won't stop until we fix the problems.

As you have probably noticed the site has been running EXTREMELY slow. We have been working around the clock to try and isolate the issue. We hired consultant to try and give us a best course of action and we are now in the process of doing so. In order to get this done we will be adding new hardware to the site. A time table of completion is unknown, but this is our number one goal. Hang in there and we will get IO back to its high speed running capacity.

Thanks for your patience,

Patrick

Come and enjoy bald eagles along the Upper Mississippi River during Prairie du Chien Bald Eagle Appreciation Day on Saturday, February 28, 2009, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Event activities will be centered along the Mississippi River at the Prairie du Chien, Wis. Regional Tourism Center, 211 S. Main Street, and the adjacent AmericInn Lodge and Suites. Ken Block, Chief Ranger at Effigy Mounds National Monument, touted Bald Eagle Appreciation Day as an “opportunity to learn about bald eagles and all of the other wonderful natural resources of the Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin and McGregor / Marquette, Iowa region directly from local experts. Our location is situated in a perfect place to experience the outdoors - the heart of the 261-mile long Upper Mississippi River Wildlife and Fish Refuge.”

From the IDNR

JEFFERSON — A Jefferson man is facing several charges relating to game violations and burglary.
Derek Eugene Ott, 27, of Jefferson, was charged by DNR conservation officers on December 4, 2008 for no hunting license, no habitat fee, no fur harvesters license, unlawful possession of raccoon (three counts), unlawful possession of buck whitetail deer (four counts), fifth degree theft, possession of stolen property and trespassing.