Through management, White Earth overcomes poor wild rice conditions

OGEMA — Minnesota’s wild rice season officially closes Sept. 30, but for most ricers in Northern Minnesota, the harvest is already over.

“For the Brainerd area at least, it seems like the sweet spot really almost always lands right around Labor Day weekend,” said Jennifer Boucher, Department of Natural Resources shallow lake program specialist in Brainerd. “... But this year was a little different because we had that extended cool spring ... It was behind this year about a week from that when it reached peak ripeness.”

Boucher said the heavy rainfall in early June caused a water bounce, causing plants to uproot or drown out and leading to spotty ricing conditions in the area.

The Brainerd lakes area wasn’t alone in feeling the effects of the June storms. The DNR’s wild rice harvesting season outlook was published in late July, two weeks before the ricing season opened. DNR wildlife staff noted variable conditions, leaning toward below average around Detroit Lakes, Park Rapids and Grand Rapids. The outlook was even worse in the Arrowhead and around Cloquet and Aitkin.

“An average to better wild rice season, you get a lot of reports of folks getting like 200 pound days where they’re like totally filling their canoe with wild rice,” Boucher said. “And this year, the best I really heard from folks going out they were getting anywhere from like 60 to 70 pounds were like their best days.”

But White Earth Wild Rice Manager Clifford Krowell said they had a record season.

“On our big lake, Lower Rice Lake in Clearwater County, we have a control structure to where we can kind of control lake levels when we do see an influx of water,” he said. “We can release a lot of that water by utilizing stop logs or building water back up when it comes close to harvest time.”

That’s not to say White Earth wasn’t impacted by high water. A lot of people’s go-to rice beds weren’t there this season. But Krowell said smaller, lesser-known rice beds that he hadn’t heard of in decades did well.

“People were talking to elders and going to look at these places,” he said. “And we did pretty good in the early season, getting up around 70,000 pounds.

Where the real poundage came was when Lower Rice Lake opened up. We were well over 200,000 pounds.”

White Earthers typically harvest 120,000-150,000 pounds off the lake, Krowell said. He’d only seen the lake produce over 200,000 pounds one other time in the last 10 years or so.

This season was all about the ricers and the Wild Rice Committee, Krowell said.

“The management that we did this year, it worked out exceptional,” he explained. “And our ricers are top-notch. They’re out there every day, day in day out, for as long as the season is.”

Krowell described himself as an avid ricer, but now he spends the season helping ricers before White Earth opens buying for the day. While he misses harvesting, he’s grateful to be part of the process.

“Just being part of watching our harvesters going out and harvesting the rice, hearing the stories, seeing what it takes for that many pounds of rice to come in,” he said. “It’s a good tradeoff for me. It’s really good.”

Funding for this environmental story was provided by the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund as recommended by the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR).