On the face your plan seems logical and proactive. The reality is most everything involving money is corrupt. How many of your gasoline tax dollars actually goes into infrastructure, probably pennies on the dollar if anything. Any funds generated will, in all likelihood, end up in some sort of general fund. And be siphoned off to some politicians or some bureaucrats cronies or pet projects (new air conditioning for the office).

We started a project here that required farmers to leave what we call wild islands in there fields. The landscape is checker boarded with these wild islands about a quarter of a mile apart, most are about the size if a football field. Basically weed fields, brush and some trees.

It worked wonders on the Deer population (we have a nine month season on Roe Deer, no kidding) and stabilized the game bird population (except Ducks) and other small game populations.

The unintended consequence of the wild island initiative (around twenty years old now) was the predator population spiked and other previously non threaten species suffered. Deer and most small game benefited overall, Ducks became a threatened species. The only Duck not on the endangered list now is the Mallard and even they have a shortened season. My point is, nobody can predict the long term outcome of any sort of intervention project.

Predator prey cycles are a series of spikes and valleys, there is no magic balance. The cycles are multi year cycles, sometimes decades long.

One of the most dramatic examples I've seen was at the old Iron Curtain. There was a three mile wide limited access area near the old border in Germany. And the last quarter of a mile pretty much a no mans land. The wildlife thrived there, little or no intervention or hunting. After around twenty years the forest started to die along the Old Iron curtain, you could see it from the air, a yellow brown stripe from horizon to horizon. The Deer population had exploded to the point they were starving, eating the bark off of old timber and any bush they could find. I was part of a project to thin out the Deer herds, both Roe Deer and Red Deer. We found bone piles, rotting carcasses and hair piles, maybe ten to the acre. Pretty much an ecological disaster. The Deer we did shoot were pretty much useless, diseased, emaciated and stunted.

The Greenies who think that if nature is left alone it will find some sort of magic balance are living in fantasy land. Any intervention or management scheme is going to take years or decades, the outcome is likely to have unintended consequences and an outcome not anticipated IMO.

The only viable management scheme I can think off is vigorous game counts and yearly quotas. Even then the outcome is iffy.

Personally, I think spring mowing by farmers is one of the larger detriments to wildlife I can think of. Just about the time the Pheasants lay, there habitat goes through a meat grinder. New born or very young fawns don't flee, they hunker down, hide and die.