Detroit Lakes Wetland Management District is located in northwest

Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...

and includes the counties of

Becker Becker () is one of the German-language surnames, along with Bäcker and Baecker, that derive from the root, which refers to baking. The surname began as a name for a baker (and thus his family). In northern Germany it can also derive from the ...

Clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4). Clays develop plasticity when wet, due to a molecular film of water surrounding the clay par ...

, Mahnomen,

Norman Norman or Normans may refer to: Ethnic and cultural identity * The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries ** People or things connected with the Norm ...

, and

Polk Polk may refer to: People * James K. Polk, 11th president of the United States * Polk (name), other people with the name Places *Polk (CTA), a train station in Chicago, Illinois * Polk, Illinois, an unincorporated community * Polk, Missouri ...

- an area of approximately . The district is divided into three general landscape areas, roughly equal in size. From west to east, these are: the

Red River Valley The Red River Valley is a region in central North America that is drained by the Red River of the North; it is part of both Canada and the United States. Forming the border between Minnesota and North Dakota when these territories were admitted ...

floodplain A floodplain or flood plain or bottomlands is an area of land adjacent to a river which stretches from the banks of its channel to the base of the enclosing valley walls, and which experiences flooding during periods of high discharge.Goudi ...

, the glacial

moraine A moraine is any accumulation of unconsolidated debris (regolith and rock), sometimes referred to as glacial till, that occurs in both currently and formerly glaciated regions, and that has been previously carried along by a glacier or ice shee ...

/ prairie pothole region, and the

hardwood Hardwood is wood from dicot trees. These are usually found in broad-leaved temperate and tropical forests. In temperate and boreal latitudes they are mostly deciduous, but in tropics and subtropics mostly evergreen. Hardwood (which comes from ...

coniferous Conifers are a group of cone-bearing seed plants, a subset of gymnosperms. Scientifically, they make up the division Pinophyta (), also known as Coniferophyta () or Coniferae. The division contains a single extant class, Pinopsida. All extant ...

forest. The district currently manages over of public land in 165 waterfowl production areas (WPAs). Additionally, district staff are responsible for more than 300 wetland and

upland Upland or Uplands may refer to: Geography *Hill, an area of higher land, generally *Highland, an area of higher land divided into low and high points *Upland and lowland, conditional descriptions of a plain based on elevation above sea level *I ...

easements on private property, totaling more than . Land acquisition and management efforts are focused in the prairie pothole region of the district, with a goal of providing habitat for nesting waterfowl. District acquisition and restoration efforts, begun in the late 1950s, have preserved and restored remnants of the tallgrass prairie and prairie wetlands. Approximately of the district's total acreage are true native prairie remnants. The primary economic base of the area is agriculture, with a strong tourism industry based on area lakes on the west side of the district. Intensive agriculture and drainage over the past 100 years has extensively altered the look and function of the historic landscape. In today's landscape, row crops dominate. A variety of acquisition efforts, including the Small Wetlands Acquisition Program, which permits the United States Fish and Wildlife Service to purchase lands for waterfowl production using money generated from the sale of "Duck Stamps," have preserved important remnants of the tallgrass prairie and prairie wetland ecosystems.

References

District website
{{authority control National Wildlife Refuges in Minnesota Protected areas of Becker County, Minnesota Protected areas of Clay County, Minnesota Protected areas of Mahnomen County, Minnesota Protected areas of Norman County, Minnesota Protected areas of Polk County, Minnesota