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Beware duck hunters: Mounting habitat losses and drought conditions across the U.S. and Canadian prairies do not bode well for this year’s hunting season.
In fact, they don’t bode well for the future of waterfowl hunting, either.
Let’s begin with the upcoming season.
Last year the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's annual Waterfowl Breeding Population and Habitat Survey—perhaps the largest wildlife survey in the world—was bubbling with optimism. For example, Canada had the fourth-highest pond count in recorded history and five duck species were in record or near-record territory.
Now this: The 2008 breeding population survey, released recently by the Service, shows a 39 percent decline in Canadian ponds and double-digit percentage drops for 5 of the 10 most abundant species in the traditional survey area.
"Overall, the duck numbers aren't as bad as they might have been, but don't look for much production this year," says Dr. Frank Rohwer of Louisiana State University, Delta Waterfowl's scientific director. "Those areas across the breeding grounds that are wet are not the productive areas, and the most productive areas are dry...real dry...bad dry."
Translation: Hunters could, and probably will, see fewer birds in the sky throughout the upcoming waterfowl season, and some duck species could have reduced bag limits, including the regal canvasback and popular scaup (bluebill).
According to the survey, the canvasback population fell 44 percent from last year's record 865,000 to just 489,000 this year—a huge surprise to some in waterfowl management circles. Last year, hunters were afforded as many as a two-canvasback bag limit. For 2008, there may well be a closed season on canvasbacks, thanks to the precipitous decline in their breeding population.
Bluebill numbers, meanwhile, jumped 8 percent from 3.5 million to 3.7 million, making scaup the third most abundant duck species. But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has approved a reduction in the scaup bag limit (it could go down to one bird, depending on the flyway in which you’re hunting) and season length for the upcoming hunting season.
Why? Because the Service is worried about the decline in the birds’ breeding population over the last 30 years or so.
The spring breeding population of scaup (which includes both greater and lesser scaup) has declined since the early 1970s. The population reached a record high of almost 8 million birds in 1972 and stood at roughly 7 million in 1984. In 2006, the scaup population reached an all-time low of 3.2 million birds. Last year, the population increased modestly but was still well below the long-term average.
The bag-limit reduction has created a bit of a firestorm. The move was opposed by Delta Waterfowl, the state wildlife agencies in Louisiana, Minnesota, South Dakota and North Dakota, as well as the Mississippi and Central Flyway Councils and the California Waterfowl Association.
The scaup decline is well-documented. Scientists continue to research several possible causes—everything from contamination of staging waters to problems with the boreal forest breeding grounds.
The big question is whether or not hunting is hurting the population. Rohwer of Delta says that scaup are the third most abundant duck species in North America and that the birds' annual harvest is only a fraction of that sustained by other abundant species. Rohwer also says that biologists who attended two major scaup scientific workshops in recent years agreed that the cause of the population decline was likely caused by habitat changes, not hunting.
This much is certain: If the scaup bag limit is reduced, diver hunters, perhaps the most passionate and conservation-minded of all duck hunters, will be negatively impacted. And that will hurt the long-term advocacy of the coveted bird—a fact that the Service had better consider before it make its final ruling on the scaup hunting season.
The long-term future of duck production on the U.S. and Canadian prairies has waterfowl managers extremely worried—and deservedly so. And their worries go well beyond the current drought. The loss of Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) acres in the Dakotas and other production states in the U.S. duck factory has been well-documented in this space over the last two years.
But the booming farm economy—that is, record-high commodity prices—appears to be affecting waterfowl habitat across the Canadian prairies as well. Indeed, reports from Canada suggest that grass and wetlands are being lost as farmers convert land to agricultural production. Which, of course, doesn’t bode well for the long-term production of ducks across the Canadian prairies.
In addition, projections for the U.S. Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) show that roughly 3.3 million acres of native prairie—important waterfowl habitat for several species—could be lost over the next years five years unless governors in Minnesota, Iowa, the Dakotas and Montana opt into Sodsaver, which is very unlikely.
The Sodsaver provision was passed in the new farm bill. It originally included the entire nation, but a last-minute poison pill limited it to those aforementioned PPR states. Too bad. If we do not protect virgin grasslands, duck populations (and other bird species) will be hurt. So, too, will hunters and bird-watchers.
Stay tuned.
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