State wildlife officials are asking Iowans not to skip over the Fish and Wildlife Fund this tax season, what’s popularly known as the Chickadee Check-off.
Stephanie Shepherd, a state wildlife diversity biologist, says contributions on your state tax form go to the Iowa DNR to help conserve non-game species across the state.
“It’s how the DNR is able to have staff dedicated to working on songbirds, raptors, frogs and toads, turtles, bumble bees, butterflies,” Shepherd says, “and so we work on all of those things on a statewide basis.”
Along with habitat restorations, the fund helps DNR staff train volunteers to monitor wildlife populations in the state. For example, volunteers recorded nearly 1,200 bumble bees representing ten species during last year’s inaugural Iowa Bumble Bee Atlas.
“Our program works on all the wildlife you can’t hunt, fish and trap out there,” Shepherd says, “so, that’s thousands of species.”
Avian ecologist Anna Buckardt Thomas is tracking the migration patterns of the wood thrush, a forest songbird that’s population has declined 50-percent since the 1960s.
“They have this really beautiful flute-like sound,” she says. “If you’ve ever heard one, it just stops you in your tracks.”
Iowa taxpayers contributed around $134,000 to the Chickadee Check-off last tax season. It’s roughly half of what Iowans contributed in 1982 when the state legislature created the fund.
(Rachel Cramer, Iowa Public Radio)