Background
Wild rice (Zizania palustris) is both a cultural and natural resource of significance in the Upper Great Lakes 
Region of North America. Human use of wild rice dates back several thousand years with a long history of utilization by Native Americans. Oral traditions within the Ojibwe (Anishinaabeg) culture describe an historic migration of the people westward to where ‘food grows on the water.’ This food, wild rice, or manoomin, is considered a gift from the creator to the Ojibwe and continues to be an important element in traditional ceremonies and customs.
Wild rice is harvested each fall using canoes and hand-held sticks, in much the same way the Ojibwe gathered it prior to European settlement. Harvesters may sell ripe seed to buyers, process some for family use or sell finished wild rice through friends, farmers markets or other informal networks. Wild rice seed, freshly harvested and unprocessed, is sold for $1 to $2 a pound, depending on the buyer. When processed and sold as a finished product, a pound of hand-harvested wild rice may sell for as much as $12.
Ecologically, wild rice habitat provides important feeding and resting areas for waterfowl on their seasonal migration, and is utilized by a variety of mammals, fish and invertebrates. Early explorers in the 1700’s recorded flocks of ducks ‘rising like thunder’ from the ripened rice fields. As early as 1890 gun clubs, recognizing the lure of wild rice for migrating waterfowl, bought and planted wild rice 
seed in local lakes. Today, Ducks Unlimited partners with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to control beaver and water levels on approximately 100 wild rice lakes across the state, promoting wild rice growth for enhanced waterfowl production.
Domestication of wild rice began in the 1950’s with the development of paddy produced wild rice. Selective breeding of wild rice to reduce ‘shattering’ began in the early 1960’s. Shattering refers to the plants’ characteristic dropping of mature seed as it ripens over a period of days, enabling wild rice beds to be harvested several times over a period of weeks or days. 
This shattering trait is undesirable in paddies, where the rice is harvested all at one time. Cultivated wild rice production jumped when growers in California decided to cultivate wild rice; and in 1988 California surpassed Minnesota in wild rice production and has continued to do so every year. In 1996 the entire wild rice industry (commercial and hand-harvest) had an estimated value of US $15-25 million dollars, with commercial production accounting for roughly 90% of the market crop.
Commercial production of wild rice has continued to increase, with California and Minnesota combined reporting 23.5 million pounds (processed weight) in 2007, nearly double the production of the 1990’s. Of this total, Minnesota’s share is 7.5 million, or just under 32%. Hand-harvested wild rice totals are difficult to quantify but state surveys in Minnesota and Wisconsin in 2006 show an average harvest of 300-400 pounds per state license buyer. These numbers, which do not include tribal data, project a harvest of over half a million pounds. In 1977 Minnesota recognized and adopted wild rice as its’ state grain.
Wild rice plays a variety of important roles within the Upper Great Lakes Region. Whether valued for its cultural significance to the Ojibwe; its status as a locally gathered food source; its taste and nutrition as a whole grain; its contribution to wildlife habitat; or as genetic stock for an expanding agricultural crop; all depend upon the continued existence of wild rice within the natural landscape.
Threats to sustaining natural wild rice
Wild rice is an aquatic grass native to North America and grows in slow moving streams and shallow lakes of the Upper Great Lakes Region of North America. In a 1900 report to the Bureau of Ethnology, Albert E. Jenks, an anthropologist, de
scribed Minnesota, east of the Mississippi, and all of northern Wisconsin as the “wild rice district.” Although found commonly across the eastern half of the United States, wild rice was “especially abundant” within this region (Figure 1.1).Habitat for wild rice declined significantly with Euro-American settlement in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.
Changes in hydrology, either restricting flow or increasing water levels, have negative effects on wild rice growth. Dams in particular have impacted wild rice growth, raising water levels and flooding traditional wild rice areas along the Mississippi River drainage as early as the 1880’s. With more than 2000 dams in Minnesota and Wisconsin affecting water depth, the cost in lost wild rice habitat is relatively unknown. More recently, road construction and culverts are having an impact on water levels, affecting wild rice habitat. Wild rice management in the state of 
Minnesota is in large part a beaver management program; trapping beavers to limit the impacts of increased water levels on selected wild rice lakes.
While the effects of hydrological changes on wild rice are well documented, the impacts of invasive species are less clear. In areas where carp (Cyrinus carpio) have become common, wild rice has disappeared Purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria L.) and hybrid cattail (Typha x glauca) are known to compete directly with wild rice for shallow water habitat Eurasian water milfoil (Myriophyllum spicatum L.) also occurs in areas of wild rice, however water depths preferred by milfoil are typically deeper and competition between the two is not well understood. Few studies have looked at competition among wild rice and other aquatic plant species, either native or non-native.
A grow
ing threat to wild rice, particularly where it grows in shallow bays of larger fishing lakes is the development of lakeshore for seasonal housing. In Minnesota and Wisconsin, studies show a significant decrease in emergent and floating-leaf vegetative cover on lakes experiencing development compared to undeveloped lakes. From 1980 to 2000, seasonal housing density increased by more than 500% in the lake counties of northern Minnesota and Wisconsin, while total housing density increased more than 100% in the same areas. Few of these new home owners are familiar with wild rice and most do not connect wild rice on the dinner plate with the ‘weeds’ growing in the lake.
Climate change and genetic engineering may also threaten wild rice habitat. In general, climate change is predicted to bring higher temperatures and lower precipitation to the rice growing region, potentially decreasing available habitat and increasing the threat of invasive species. Recent studies suggest that genetic adaptation to climate change will not occur fast enough to meet the expected changes in climate, in part due to habitat changes which restrict gene movement.
Recent mapping of the wild rice genome by the University of Minnesota, and the possibility of bioengineered seeds for use in paddy production, have raised concern among Ojibwe and non-Ojibwe people. Paddies currently used for commercial production in Minnesota are located in the wild rice region and genetically altered seeds, if created and introduced, would have the potential to contaminate natural stands of wild rice. In 2007 Minnesota passed legislation which called for a study of threats to natural stands of wild rice, and also required an environmental impact statement upon the application of a permit for genetically engineered wild rice.
Compounding the threats to natural wild rice is the mosaic of management regimes in place across the region. National, state, tribal and treaty-ceded jurisdictions fragment the wild rice region into management units which vary in size and extent; from the 688 hectare (1,700 acres) Sokaogon Mole Lake Reservation and its one wild rice lake to the State of Minnesota, with millions of hectares and hundreds of wild rice lakes. Funding for research and conservation of wild rice is limited and, although cooperative activities do occur across the region (DU and DNR partnerships, state DNR and tribal government), there is no regular communication or strategy for assessing management and research needs for the conservation of wild rice on a regional scale.
Whether or not wild rice is continuing to decline across the landscape is unknown. Reports of decline in productivity and distribution occurred as early as 1951. Estimates from the 1940’s and 1950’s suggest Minnesota’s 
wild rice acreage to have been around 30,000 acres, and Wisconsin’s around 6,000 acres. The current estimate of wild rice acreage in Minnesota is 64,000 acres. Earlier estimates were based on state harvest surveys while the later Minnesota estimate is based on wildlife management field observations. Fannucchi states that “no one knows how much native rice acreage is lost annually, and if this is a large or small problem.”
Minnesota and Wisconsin have much to lose economically, culturally and environmentally should wild rice disappear from the landscape. No baseline exists from which to measure declines or increases in wild rice distribution, and although several threats are recognized, no assessments have been done to identify recent patterns in loss or gain of wild rice habitat on a regional scale.
Current funding levels are inadequate for such an undertaking within any one management regime and a formal regional approach does not exist. Water resources, the foundation of wild rice habitat, will continue to see impacts from increased recreational use and a growing population unaware of the value of wild rice habitat. Harvesters of wild rice now include those outside of the traditional culture (Ojibwe), and little is known about either group’s connection to the landscape and/or participation patterns.
Without a holistic understanding of the relationships and linkages between the social and ecological systems involved in wild rice landscapes, and a more coordinated, informed management approach, the continued regional presence of wild rice and the harvesting culture it supports is at risk of being lost.