A Day in the Life Of Andy
Gabbert, GFP Resource Biologist
By Chris Hull, GFP Communications Specialist
Andy Gabbert has a present for South Dakota’s hunters, bird watchers and other outdoor enthusiasts. Andy, like Santa Claus, has scattered presents across South Dakota, and the gift he is working on at the moment is a doozy. Problem is, if you are like me, you want to open presents right away, and you could do that with this present, but it is just going to get better as the years go on.
Andy is a Resource Biologist for the Wildlife Division of Game Fish and Parks and is one of two people specifically dealing with habitat improvement and planning. Andy must eat a lot of carrots, because he has unbelievable vision. He can look at a large, basically featureless piece of ground and see tree belts, native grasses and wildlife. Andy could have been a teacher because he has the patience of Job. He and his crew work at planning, planting, plowing, seeding and weeding the areas with the knowledge that in three to five years, their projects will take shape. Me, I get bored and impatient painting a room in my house.
A native of Manhattan, Kansas, Andy graduated from Kansas State and went to work at the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Testing Facility in Nevada where he collected baseline ecological data. After five years, he returned to the upper midwest and SDSU where he completed his masters degree studying pheasant use of winter habitat. His experience in Nevada and his interest in habitat lead to a job with the South Dakota Department of Game Fish and Parks.
"I loved working in Nevada," Andy told me after we met in Mitchell and made our way to one of the Game Production Areas he was working on. "Every day was a different thing. One day I may be looking at tortoises, that night I might be capturing bats. The range of work was incredible. For me, it all came back to habitat though, and I realized that habitat was the key to the future of wildlife."
Back to Gabbert’s present. We pulled into an area not too far from Mitchell. From the highway it looked like a large cornfield, but after turning onto gravel, I quickly saw how wrong that was. We had arrived at the Chip Allen Game Production Area. If you haven’t heard of Chip Allen, write it down, it will be worth it. This GPA is 2300 acres, in the heart of the pheasant belt. Currently, there are food plots, cropland, a large slough, some older tree belts, bare ground and good grass cover. As it stands, this public area holds a great number of pheasants, deer and other wildlife, but after Andy is through with it, well Merry Christmas.
We got out of the pickup and walked to one of Chip Allen’s bare soil areas. Andy strapped what looked like a backpack on and began walking, intently looking at a LCD screen. He stopped, backed up a couple steps and scratched at the ground. "Right here is the spot," he said. I followed Andy through several of these dances, each time pounding a fence post where he marked. After we were done, Andy showed me a map of the area. "These areas are going to be small shrubs and trees," Andy pointed to the fence posts. When I asked him why he decided to put the trees here, he got pretty serious.
"The first things I do when I come to a new area is ask, ‘What do we want to manage for? What is available on the private land around the GPA, and how do we maximize the area we are working on for wildlife?"
"In this instance, we are going to be planting native grass strips in between the crop and the trees on one side and grasses between the trees and the slough over there. It provides wildlife protection from the elements and gives the hunter a great area to hunt." Andy took a deep breath and continued. It was easy to see he was excited about this project. "We also need to make it acceptable for the producers who are helping us farm some of these areas. They are really a key. Most of the guys putting crops on our GPAs aren’t really doing it to make money. They are doing it because they have an interest in wildlife and want to help."
We continued the tour of the Chip Allen GPA and Andy gave me a quick history lesson. Game Fish and Parks purchased this piece of ground in 2003 from Ducks Unlimited. Much of the area is grassland, and it holds a good number of pheasants. But Andy was diligent that he could make it not only better, but MUCH better.
"Much of this area is brome grass," he told me as we walked through a particularly high patch of the light, chocolate-colored grass. "It looks great. It is tall and pretty thick, but once a snow comes, it lays down and doesn’t provide a good winter cover, which is really important. The new plantings we are doing are native grasses, Big and Little Blue Stem, Indiangrass, Switchgrass and some others. These grasses stand up to the snow and provide some great cover. Brome grass was planted during the Soil Bank and is not native to the area. It basically took over the prairies. With new plantings, burnings, and planned grazings, we are trying to get these areas back into the really good cover. As you can see, it is a slow process, but it is working. You just have to have some patience. In three years, this place is going to be unbelievable."
"So how much patience do I need?" I asked Andy as we watched three hen pheasants duck into the edge of a crick bed.
"Typically, these native grasses will seed out in the first year and will be really good cover in three years. Converting a piece of ground this large is a work in progress and will take a while," he said.
The urge to hunt was overwhelming me. I wanted a crack at this cover now, but Andy has a lot of other irons in the proverbial fire, and we wanted to look at a few more.
We made our way towards Madison and stopped at the Burk Slough GPA. This GPA was burnt two years ago and then no-till drilled with warm season native grasses. My jaw dropped as we walked through it. The huge stands of cover were almost beyond my imagination. All I could think of was having to work my dog out more this summer, because this stuff was going to put her (and me) to the test.
"We are conducting studies with SDSU to find the best management practices for producers who want to try to convert some of their brome ground back to native grasses, sort of a cook book for getting native grasses back. I think both people and wildlife would reap the benefits of those conversions,"Gabbert said.
As we drove to other GPAs, Andy told me of one final project he was working on. With the success of the "Adopt a Highway" program throughout the country, Andy applied that idea to an "Adopt a GPA" program. The hope is that sportsmen’s groups would take a local GPA and assist with making them better.
Initially this program involves cleaning up parking areas, replacing signage and making recommendations on how to make the area better. Eventually, he would like to see members assist in tree and grass planting, food plot planting and the myriad of other projects it takes to make a successful GPA.
Currently, this program has eight adopted GPAs in southeastern South Dakota. We bumped into the Isaac Walton Club of Madison, where people were putting up signs and cleaning up their adopted GPA within a stones throw of town. They were all smiles as they talked about the memories this piece of ground held for them. I wondered why I hadn’t thought of this idea.
A reoccurring theme in our discussions was patience. "I used to hunt WPAs, GPAs and walk-in areas, but now I find myself only hunting the GPAs,"Andy explained. "I just seem to get a big kick out of it. I don’t have the money to buy this kind of land, but I can make it better for my kids, your kids and their kids. I kind of had a neat experience with my middle son Justin. He is thirteen and I took him out for his first youth hunt on a GPA I had worked on three years ago. He shot his first pheasant there. That is the reason I love doing this work."
As Andy and I parted ways, I thought about all the gifts I have received in my life. I think most of them pale in comparison to the memory of a first pheasant. Most things do.
Santa gives great cheer during the holiday season, but even old Kris Kringle might get a little jealous of the quality of loot Andy is working on.
-GFP-
Get to Know ‘Em
Habitat Resource Biologist
Andy Gabbert
Name - Andy Gabbert
Position - Habitat Resource Biologist
Hometown - Brandon, SD
Parents-brothers-sisters (Parents are Nathan/Helen Gabbert of Manhattan KS, 1 brother - Warren of Cortez CO)
Wife-kids-ages - Pamela, Joshua (15), Justin (13), Jessica (11) - Yeah I know, it's a "J" thing! Misty (Yellow Lab), Pepper (Black Lab).
What do you like the best about your job - Designing wildlife areas and watching them mature over time.