With less than a week to go before Arkansas’ waterfowl opener, wildlife managers there say a critical habitat area in Conway County will remain “crippled” due to thieves damaging the water-delivery system. In their announcement Monday, officials with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission said that earlier this year, some thieves stripped all the copper wiring from the motor and control unit that drive the pump at Ed Gordon Point Remove Wildlife Management Area.
This 200-horsepower pump is needed to flood 20 of the 23 impoundments at the WMA. Without it, those areas will remain dry just as ducks need the water most.
“Waterfowl hunters scouting [the WMA] in Conway County will notice a significant lack of flooded habitat for ducks, shorebirds and other winter migrants during the early portion of the upcoming duck season,” AGFC officials warned in a news release.
Officials explained that while they hope to get the pump up and running by the start of duck season, they’ll first have to complete some extensive repairs that require custom electrical work.
“They essentially stripped everything from the meter loop to the VFD,” said AGFC wildlife biologist Alex Zachary, referring to the variable frequency drive control unit that functions as the brain of the pump system. He said the custom repairs have been delayed because the agency has had to “bid out the work, wait for bids to come in and then wait for the VFD to be built.”
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Based on the responses to AGFC’s announcement, however, it seems more duck hunters are pointing fingers at the agency than the copper wire thieves. An overwhelming number of comments on the agency’s Facebook post claim the repairs aren’t as complicated as officials imply, and that “any electrician can have that going in a day” or less. A few sparkies even chimed in, either to offer their services or to explain how they could quickly fix the pump, at least temporarily.
Other Facebook users brought up the timing of the announcement, and they questioned why officials were suddenly calling attention to the problem just six days before the Nov. 23 duck opener. (AGFC did not specify in its announcement when the theft happened or when habitat managers learned about it.) “Should the flooding not have started weeks ago?” one user asked.
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