Hello Brokenwing and Riverduck. Firstly, the cookie cutter can only control weeds that grow in channels and ponds. Silt must be managed mechanically with a shovel, dozer or sand sucker. It cost over $15,000 to remove silt from the ponds and channels at 21, 22, 26, 27, 18 and 19 prior to this 2013 season. We spent about $5,000 on the Cookie Cutter. We were advised that 23 was a lost cause after digging it out twice before. The people who should know like Jim Granger described it as a silt trap. The water was high enough this year to permit people who wanted to hunt it to go there but the LPWA has given up maintaining it. At $20 a pop it would take 1000 hunts to cover what was spent on maintenance this season alone . The last LPWA banquet and Ducks Unlimited paid the bills for this years efforts because the hunting fee only covers day to day expenses. Ducks Unlimited help to maintain the marsh up to $6000 a year and Delta Waterfowl also throw in a percentage of their Norfolk Banquet revenues. Money received through grants is spent to improve the marsh but we rarely benefit directly because the project objectives don't often consider us hunters. Since improving the marsh for waterfowl, fish, people and other wildlife including threatened species is important we always get directly involved and lead most of the time. It's probably safe to say that the Unit would no longer exist if it were not for the LPWA. That being said it would probably no longer exist without the support of the OMNR, OFAH, DUC, LPW, Delta, LPWA supporters and a whole bunch of people I probably didn't mention. A huge amount of effort has been put into saving the Crown Marsh over the last 20 years .
