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BATON ROUGE — The Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission (LWFC) approved a resolution to add 560 acres to the Richard K. Yancey Wildlife Management Area during its February meeting Thursday morning.

The land is located in Concordia Parish and was leased to the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) by the Concordia Parish School Board. Richard K. Yancey WMA will now encompass more than 71,431 acres with the addition of the 560 acres of 16th section land.

Richard K. Yancey was first created in 1967 as the Red River WMA and was then expanded in 1971 as the Three Rivers WMA by the governor of Louisiana. The Concordia Parish School Board lease adds 560 acres of land with valuable wildlife habitat to the WMA.

Under the lease, the property shall be exclusively used for wildlife management purposes and “is dedicated to the protection, conservation, and management of fish and wildlife and their habitat, and such public recreation, including, but not limited to, hunting, fishing, and trapping, which is consistent with these purposes.”

The addition of land to the WMA comes a month after the LWFC voted to close turkey season this year indefinitely. Richard K. Yancey sits close to the Mississippi River and has faced challenges for its turkey population due to consistent flooding. Turkeys had been unable to breed and raise broods effectively.

Therefore there was not a huntable population of birds so the LWFC closed the season until conditions improve. Habitat and flooding are two limiting factors turkey populations face in Louisiana and the Mississippi delta. LWFC said hunting was not a cause of the population decline but it could delay the population recovering.

It is not unusual for Wildlife Management Areas and land owned by school districts to touch. Natchez State Park WMA and the Natchez Adams School District share a size-able border east of the state park lake. NASD land also borders land in Sandy Creek Wildlife Management Area east of Natchez.