Reprinted from a Dec 9, 2007 column in the Morgantown Dominion Post
As I sat in my tree stand four weeks ago, I heard migrating geese flying overhead, going to their wintering grounds. What a great sound. West Virginia is not a big waterfowl state, and there are not all that many ducks in the Morgantown area. Sure, we do see birds on the Mon River and at Cheat Lake, especially during spring and fall migration time, but our forested mountains don’t favor waterfowl in numbers found in the prairie states and provinces.
Even so, I thought it might be interesting to look at an overall picture of what is happening to duck populations in the United States. Over the past thirty or more years there have been serious declines in wetland habitats and this has led to concerns about duck numbers. The U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Canadian Wildlife Service conduct annual surveys of breeding waterfowl so they can follow any population changes. They look at 1.3 million square miles of duck habitat in the north-central portions of the continent (America and Canada) and Alaska. Their 2007 survey shows our total duck population at more than 41 million birds. That’s a whopping 14 percent increase and 9 percent above the average for 1955-2005. The reason for the increase reflects above-average rain for the Midwest pothole country (North Dakota, Saskatchewan, Manitoba).
The following table shows how ten of these species did.
Breeding Ducks by Species (in millions)
Species 2006 2007 % Change from 2006 Change from 40-yr. Avg.
American Wigeon 2.171 2.803 +29 + 7
Canvasback 0.691 8.865 +25 +53
Northern Shoveler 3.680 4.553 +24 +106
Gadwall 2.825 3.355 +19 +96
Blue-winged Teal 5.860 6.694 +14 +48
Green-winged Teal 2.587 2.911 +13 +55
Redhead 0.916 1.009 +10 +60
Mallard 7.277 8.032 +10 +7
Scaup 3.247 3.452 +6 -33
Northern Pintail 3.386 3.335 -2 -19
The long-term trends for most species are positive. For example, Blue-winged Teal were up 28% last year and another 14% this year. This was the third highest breeding population ever recorded for this species. Green-winged Teal were up 20% last year and 13% this year. Gadwalls were up 30% last year and another 19% this year. Redheads were up 55% last year and 10% this year, and Canvasbacks were up 33% last year and 25% this year. Shovelers, Redheads, and Canvasbacks are at record highs.
But last year was a record low for Scaup, and they’ve been dropping for twenty years. The slight increase this year shows how important good rains are for ducks. Northern Pintails had a 32% increase last year, but for unexplained reasons they dropped by 2% this year. Even so, biologists are predicting that the good rains this past year will greatly improve the situation for pintails in the near term. And there are major research programs being conducted by Ducks Unlimited on both Scaup and Pintails to determine management strategies to bring these a species back.
The survey also showed that there were more ponds in Canada and that helped raise the numbers of ducks. In May there were seven million ponds, a 15% increase above the number found in 2006. More ponds, more breeding habitat, more birds. Even better was the fact that the breeding survey was conducted in May, but rains continued into June. This probably means that the figures are really even better than what is shown in the table.
But there is more to duck nesting success than rainfall. In Saskatchewan, even though the weather was super for ducks, Mallard populations there are only 4% above the long term average. Same in Alberta, where the long term average for Mallards was down 24%. So while Mallard numbers in North Dakota jumped up 138% above their long term average, North of the border things are a bit gloomy. Why is that?
Two organizations, Ducks Unlimited and Delta Waterfowl, have done more than any organizations to help waterfowl and waterfowl habitat. (Just another example of the stewardship hunters show for wildlife). They’ve lobbied hard for passage of the Farm Bill and the Conservation Reserve Program and Wetland Reserve Program (parts of the Farm Bill) every year. The folks at Delta suggest that the reason some species are doing better in the United States is because of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). This provides millions of acres of undisturbed grasslands and wetlands for nesting ducks. Because of the CRP, mallards are up considerably in the USA and down in Canada. Let me add that right now it appears that politics will lead to the loss of many thousands of acres of CRP lands in the United States and this is very bad news for ducks and other wildlife species.
But for now, many duck species are doing well, and those that support the Farm Bill, Ducks Unlimited, Delta Waterfowl, and others, deserve the credit.
