“It’s a hard pill to swallow,” said Brian Lammers, Hamilton County Conservation Director, “but we are not alone.”

Most of the county offices had to address making cuts of some nature. Lammers said their solutions will be effective as of July 1.

“We will have to pause all of our daily stuff for our public wildlife management areas,” he said. “Our general maintenance areas will have to be at zero.”

There are over 1,400 acres that are managed by the county department as natural resource areas in addition to the parks, golf course and their facilities.

Submitted photo
This is the view of part of the property involved with the Long-Metcalf Conservation area, located north of Webster City, and south of Woolstock. The property will be restored as a natural prairie, and wetlands.

Day to day maintenance has been done by a full-time employee who handled mowing, spraying, and taking care of the prairie grounds. That position, which has been vacant, will not be filled. Lammers is hoping this will be a temporary situation.

Another position that will not be filled is the role of naturalist. John Laird, who currently is the Hamilton County naturalist, has been providing most of the educational programs. These programs will also be paused starting in January of 2027, when he retires.Despite the cuts, there is good news.

Lammers has been working with the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation over the past few years concerning land north of Webster City which was donated by the Richard and Robert Metcalf family.

The two brothers had donated 89 acres in 2024 to INHF, but there was another 112 acres that were on the market to sell.

The soil was really rocky and sandy and did not produce a good crop, according to Lammers.

“We have a land acquisition policy in place for the greatest conservation need,” said Lammers, We have a checklist to consider the need, and we saw it would be better suited to being native prairie.”

Joe Jayjack of INHF was contacted about the land, and through their department they were able to negotiate a reasonable price for the land.

“In 2025 we were able to work on a reduced price on those 112 acres,” Jayjack said.

Pheasants Forever, who help fund purchases of ground that would be good habitat for birds nesting were contacted to see if they would be able to help with the purchase of that ground. With the Wildlife Habitat Stamp Grant through the Iowa DNR, the potential for purchasing that ground became a reality.

Richard Metcalf, who lives in Bristol, New Hampshire, and Robert Metcalf, who resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota, said they would prefer to see the property go to conservation efforts than to be farmed.

To consider a purchase, matching money was needed to apply for a grant. A $75,000 donation from the Hamilton County Pheasants Forever and another $10,000 from the Whitetails Unlimited in Eagle Grove, Webster County and the National Chapter, in addition to another $26,000 in private donations, and the REAP account through the Hamilton County Conservation board made the purchase possible. The Wildlife Stamp grant went through and the project was fully funded.

Plans for the area include the native prairies, some wetlands management and a future canoe access location.

The development of the area is financially secure through the grants received working with the DNR. The fish and wildlife service will begin tile exploration when the final crop is harvested in 2026, then the restoration work will be implemented in the fall .

The Metcalf development budget includes the prairie seed, planting, establishment mowing, wetland excavation, wetland seed, and wetland planting.

The purchase and development of the property has had no tax dollars involved.

“We’re very thankful for the brothers, the Pheasants Forever, Whitetails Unlimited and INHF for helping protect our natural resources.” Lammers said.

The property includes 1.7 miles of river, and protecting the waterways through Iowa are important for improving the overall water quality.

“It’s our core mission, to protect our natural resources,” said Lammers.

Jayjack said Lammers is one of the hardest working conservation officers he has known.

“He in particular is good at knowing how to work with land owners,” said Jayjack. “The opportunity to do restoration like this, we would like to see happen all over the place.”