Linn County Pheasants Forever - About Us Page

A Local Iowa Chapter

Welcome. We are Linn County Pheasants Forever Chapter #45.

Our Chapter's mission is to:

• Conserve critical habitat for wildlife, pollinators, native plants and flowers
• Preserve outdoor heritage traditions
• Create wildlife areas for public use and enjoyment
• Engage our community and assist with initiative that "No Child is Left Indoors"
• Educate youth and adults
• Advocate and provide community outreach that fits our mission above

Pheasants Forever is the only national organization with a model of chapters keeping 100% of the funds they raise. While belonging to a larger national organization that has a voice on federal and state conservation policies, chapters are tasked with finding projects for their funds. Iowa takes full advantage of this model using funds raised for projects locally as well as other areas in the state of Iowa.

Help support this organization by becoming a member and attending our annual Linn County Pheasants Forever Banquet. The banquet is necessary for us to carry out our R3 efforts in our community. Our R3 goals are two-fold:

1. Create new participants in an outdoor activity
2. Increase participation rates of current outdoor participants

Learn more below under R3 on the background of this effort for our chapter and across Pheasants Forever in our state and nationwide.

Follow us: @IowaLinnCoPF Facebook Page

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Learn more of our R3 efforts

Conservation and outdoor recreation go hand-in-hand. As public land stewards, we face many challenges managing America’s natural resources for recreation. Participation rates in many outdoor activities are changing. Demographic changes, competing hobbies and interests, and shifts in popular American culture have all contributed to the decline in participation rates of several outdoor pastimes. Currently, champions of the outdoor recreation community are focusing their efforts to strategically increase participation in hunting, angling, and the shooting sports through a national movement referred to as“R3.”

R3 (recruitment, retention and reactivation) describes everything from a specific program to an organization’s entire strategic vision to engage and serve customers.

True R3 efforts focus on the needs of individuals and the process required to ensure their adoption of, and continued participation, in a new outdoor activity.  This outdoor-specific adoption process is referred to as the Outdoor Recreation Adoption Model (ORAM), and is based on more than fifty years of research documenting why and how certain activities or ideas are adopted by people and cultures. The ORAM illustrates, in a linear fashion, the steps an individual moves through as they learn about, try and then adopt a new activity or behavior and can be used to understand the difference between recruitment, retention and reactivation.

By understanding the ORAM and the processes critical to an individual’s adoption of an activity, R3 program managers and organizations can build strategies that effectively engage individuals in outdoor recreation and increase the reach and impact of their R3 efforts. To learn more about the ORAM and R3, join the professional R3 community at www.nationalR3plan.com.

Our Local Habitat Projects

We actively partner locally as well with other chapters and Iowa organizations on habitat projects to be involved with:
Habitat field events

• Engage youth through education, safety and field projects.
• Restore and preserve public lands through habitat initiatives.
• Contribute to funding and restoration in our local community.

Our fundraising has been applied to habitat initiatives:

• In six (6) area counties including projects such as Buffalo Creek, Jones County, Linn County and Delaware County.
• Involving land acquisitions that are critical for the conservation of habitat for wildlife, butterflies, native plants and flowers.
• That have empowered local communities to have public land usage.
• That are critical to our success through our group's annual fundraising banquet, Heroes Hunt, and contributions from our local community. Our annual banquet  is attended by nearly ~240 people and helps us to generate money that we in-turn invest in our community.

Leave your Mark with a Donation

Because of generous supporters like you, Pheasants Forever has been able to stand up for a cause you believe in through programs that are dedicated to the conservation of pheasants, quail and other wildlife. You can also be an integral part of our future by including a charitable gift within your will, overall estate and financial plans. Truly an easy and effective way to leave a legacy.

Click here to learn how to plan your gift or "Contact" your local Linn County chapter above.  With a little planning, you can help us maintain and expand our habitat improvements, public awareness, education and land management policies and programs for years to come.

Organizational History

Our local chapter, Pheasants Forever #45 was founded in 1983, in Linn County, Iowa. Our Chapter's board and volunteers assist in our communities to conserve critical habitat for wildlife, butterflies, native plants and flowers, preserve outdoor heritage traditions, acquire land to create wildlife areas for public use and enjoyment, engage our community and assist with initiative that "No Child is Left Indoors".

Pheasants Forever was co-founded on a national level in 1982 by co-workers at the St. Paul Minnesota Pioneer Press and Dispatch.  Outdoor editor Dennis Anderson and national advertising director Jeff Finden were the co-founders who both recognized a need for habitat restoration and preservation to ensure the future of pheasants and other wildlife.

PF's first publication entitled "Rooster Tales," published in February 1983. This became the forerunner of today's Pheasants Forever Journal of Upland Conservation. The fledgling PF held its first banquet on April 15, 1983, drawing 800 people at the inaugural banquet. In January 2007, PF's third-ever National Pheasant Fest in Des Moines, Iowa, became the largest event in PF history, drawing over 24,500 attendees over a three-day span.

Twenty-five years after its inception, Pheasants Forever has become a grassroots, nationwide upland conservation movement - a national conservation powerhouse. The organization has grown to 110,000 members with over 600 chapters across the U.S. and Canada. Nationwide, Pheasants Forever has spent $260 million on program expenditures, which have helped fund 347,000 habitat projects affecting 4.4 million acres across North America. Along the way, PF has continued to employ the same unique organizational model of empowering local chapters to determine how 100 percent of their locally-raised conservation funds are spent. This local control allows chapters to see the fruits of their chapter efforts in their own communities.