ORIGINALLY WRITTEN TOM STOPPEL
As a history teacher at McPherson High School, Matt Jirgens strives to teach his students how America was molded, what lessons have been learned in the process and what needs to be done to assure the country’s continued prosperity.
As a landowner, Jirgens hopes his dedication to the preservation and manipulation of wildlife habitat on 80 acres of Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) in western Marion County will assure him that wild game will benefit from lessons learned and prosper for years to come.
Because of their continued efforts to provide a productive and reproductive habitat, Jirgens and wife Melissa of Lehigh have been named winners of the Wildlife Award for Marion County sponsored by Kansas Department of Wildlife & Parks, Quail Unlimited and the Kansas Bankers Association.
“Being a schoolteacher, I’m inside all day in kind of a noisy environment, so it’s really nice to get out here and hear nature doing its thing,” Jirgens said of his land, which, coincidentally, includes part of the historic Chisholm Trail and lies just a mile from the Santa Fe Trail. “That’s my biggest enjoyment- knowing I’m helping nature do its thing.
“I think we’re all in this world together and it’s our responsibility to take care of what we’ve been given and try to pass land on to the next generation better than we found it.”
As a youngster growing up in the southeast Kansas town of Toronto, Jirgens said he always enjoyed interacting with nature, especially when it included the presence of pheasants, quail and other game birds.
“I’ve always liked to hunt and wanted a place to be able to hunt, so we bought this land and thought it would be a good thing to improve the wildlife habitat in the process,” he said. “We modified the CRP and put 3.9 acres of food plots in.”
Jirgens’ food plots have included wheat, milo and mixtures of clover.
“We’ve also had some pretty good success with just stirring up the ground and letting the native forbes and native weed seeds grow on their own,” he said. “I like to make our ground as hospitable as possible for wildlife but it’s a big challenge, especially for the quail.”
Since purchasing the land in 2001, Matt and Melissa, along with sons Alex and Noah, have improved the habitat by planting nearly 600 seedling trees, which they purchased through the Kansas State Forestry Service in Manhattan.
“The majority of the trees we planted were Sand Hill Plums, but we also planted Eastern Red Cedars, Sawtooth Oaks, Osage Orange, Black Locust and Burr Oak,” Jirgens said. “The first year we planted some Ponderoas Pines, which are a beautiful tree, but you have to baby them. So now we just want to plant the hardiest trees.
“If it’s not supposed to be growing here, I don’t want to plant it.”
Jirgens also makes constructive use of controlled burns each spring, allowing both increased viability of his grass stand and the opportunity for native forbes to flourish.
“The grass was planted about 20 years ago and hadn’t been burned at any time so the underbrush, if you will, was so thick that it was difficult for the smaller birds to really navigate,” he said. “We try to rotate the burns, and burn about a third of the area each season.
“From what I’ve read, quail really do thrive better when they have more diversity in their habitat and are able to move from one spot to another,” he added. “Burning that grass off really opened up the soil and allowed the grass to reestablish.”
Jirgens said he hopes to eventually divide his property into four 20-acre tracts.
“I want to get some cross sections of plum thickets going and do some strip discing,” he said. “I hope to use those as more of a permanent fire break and do different management practices on each section.”
An additional priority for Jirgens’ property is a water source, which he hopes to provide with the construction of a pond in the near future.
Jirgens said his interaction with the Natural Resources Conservation Service staff in Marion has been nothing but productive.
“I’ve gotten lots of literature from them and lots of advice on erosion control and how to improve my grasses, which will ultimately improve my habitat,” Jirgens said.
“Dale Ehlers and Gary Shuler have been out a couple of times and they were really a huge help with getting my food plots established.”
Much to his delight, Jirgens said his hard work seems to be paying dividends.
“There are definitely more birds since we’ve been working with our burns and food plots,” he said. “We have two or three coveys of quail and we’re finding a lot more pheasants.”
With six years of hard work under his belt and many more on the horizon, Jirgens said winning the Wildlife Award was a pleasant surprise.
“I was shocked but I’ll be honest-this was an award I wanted to win someday, but I thought it’d be 10 years down the road,” he said. “We’ve done a lot of work already, but I also know there’s a lot of work yet to be done.
“But I also know the NRCS is willing to help and has a lot of knowledge about habitat improvement,” he said. “A lot of people put a lot of work into things like this and it’s a lot easier when you work with the NRCS.”
