Columnist Susan Snyder: Wildlife area is for the birds

Monday, May 12, 2003 | 8:12 a.m.

Keith Brose eyed the cultivated fields beyond the open driver's window of his pickup truck.

The crops, he said, are for the birds -- ducks, geese and other waterfowl -- that find a millet-sunflower mix appealing.

"It's a busy place," Brose said of the Overton Wildlife Management Area he supervises.

By fall the 27 acres of new grain fields will be set apart by 22 acres of wetland, also designed to attract migrating waterfowl that Brose hopes will hang around a little. It's one project of three being funded by Ducks Unlimited, a private organization with which Brose has partnered.

The wildlife management area lies about 80 miles north of Las Vegas, encompassing 17,657 acres as it stretches along the Muddy and Virgin rivers from the north end of Lake Mead National Recreation Area to an area just south of Bunkerville.

It undoubtedly has its die-hard fans but largely is unknown to the masses. Yet, the pinch of human development in nearby Overton, Logandale and even Mesquite is felt here in the decreasing numbers of birds that stop.

"The birds are going to follow the feed," Brose said. "We're hoping with the developments we're doing we'll be able to hold them here a little."

It's a shell game of adding and rearranging habitat components to provide the best possible environment for migrating birds and upland game. Locals say Brose has played it well in the nine years he has been supervisor.

"It has changed so dramatically. It was totally overgrown. You couldn't see the signs. You couldn't even see what was there," said Judy Metz, owner of Sugar's Cafe in Overton and town board chairwoman. "He gets out there and breaks his back and gets the volunteers. He has really pushed and helped to get the projects in there."

Sugar's, by the way, turns out a mean bacon cheeseburger. But I digress.

Brose blushes at the praise, but he is passionate about this land. He lives there with his wife, Mary, sharing the area's residence compound with the local game warden.

"People who live like this are basically isolationists. You use your imagination a lot to do things," Brose said.

His imagination conjured up an idea for better picnic shelters and a small amphitheater near the area's entrance. The landscaping is kept up by a local Girl Scout troop, and two Eagle Scouts have made adding a fire pit and benches their priority.

Wildlife management areas typically are the domain of hunters. But Brose, a lifelong hunter himself, said he welcomes increasing numbers of what he calls "non-consumptive users" -- people who'd rather watch wild birds than eat them.

Members of the Nevada Board of Wildlife are trying to raise money to build an information center and interpretive trails through the area for visitors and schoolchildren.

"It's a great wildlife viewing place. There's nothing in this area that offers anything like that," Brose said.

But that's a way off. Right now there are fields to be cultivated, ponds to fill and wetlands to boost. The birds will be coming back in a few months, and the small upland game and resident waterfowl already have young to raise.

"Every day is a new adventure," he said.