Berggren plan draft released

A draft of the 2021 Berggren Plan for pheasant management had been released for public comment by the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission.  

The plan is based on improving pheasant hunting in Nebraska over the next five years. 

The draft outlines the goals of the plan as, increasing pheasant abundance, increasing hinter access to land, increase the amount of pheasant hunters and manage hunter expectations.  

The original Berggren Plan or Berggren 1.0 was used from 2016-2020 and included 2,434 projects with private landowners with improving pheasant habitat in priority areas. The new plan includes efforts to incentivize Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) land when improving pheasant habitat.  

The plan splits the state into six habitat priority areas, part of Dawes County falls into Northern Panhandle Pheasant Opportunity Area (NPPOA). Other priority areas include Southwest, South-Central, Southern Panhandle, Central and Northeast.  The Southeast and Central Platte priority areas that were including the original Berggren plan were removed.

Goals for NPPOA include 1,000 acres of new CRP land, 12,586 acres of re-enrolled CRP, 2,325.7 acres of mid-contract CRP land and 4,232.2 acres of grass establishment on pivot acres, over the next five years. 

The plan also outlines the NPPOA having a goal of 35% of CRP acres having public access for pheasant hunting.  

Other changes include goals to improve the number of minority group hunters, re-evaluating how cost-effective pheasant releases are and how they affect the number of new hunters. 

The development of an “Upland Gamebird Science Literacy” website to help communicate science and research that applies to upland game bird management.

A virtual meet is being held at 7 p.m. Central Time Dec. 8. Registration for the meeting is available on the Game and Parks Commission website. 

The draft of the plan is available on the website and comments can be made online at outdoornebraska.gov/pheasantplan.