Insights

A HUNTER’S ROOTS—A CONSERVATION NECESSITY
The prairies: where it all began for DU’s Don Young, where it still begins for most of this continent’s waterfowl

Going home again. Thomas Wolfe once said it can’t be done, or at least that home rarely proves to be the way you remembered it. If you’re a prairie boy by origin, and a duck hunter and duck guy in general, however, returning to your home surroundings might just be an exception.

It seems just like yesterday that my father and grandfather carried me as a two-year-old into a Saskatchewan grainfield for my introduction to what has become a life-long passion—duck hunting. Beyond that formative experience, I was blessed to be raised among family and friends with an interest in conservation. Indeed, my grandfather and one of my uncles were associated with DU dating back to the 1950s, through a waterfowl and wetland census program—known as the “key man” program—conducted by Ducks Unlimited volunteers. Over the years, I came to understand the deeply rooted traditions of days afield and a love of the land that is so characteristic of prairie people raised in small towns, villages, on family farms. I guess the point here is that it is always amazing, in retrospect, how early life experiences have a way of shaping your life.

Coming back to the prairies again last fall (see “Prairie Homecoming,” page 36) allowed me to look again at the prairies through the eyes both of a hunter and waterfowl biologist. Some things have remained the same or at least similar—a wonderful abundance and diversity of waterfowl and hunting opportunities. Some things have changed—for better and worse. Certainly the waterfowl conservation footprint developed by DU and its partners has grown, but at the same time, for a wide variety of economic and social reasons, unrelenting pressures on the best prairie habitats have continued or accelerated.

To help you understand the complexities of addressing the pressures affecting waterfowl that breed on the prairies, this issue of Ducks Unlimited contains the third feature article in our series “Prairies Under Siege.” Our “Science and Conservation” (page 42) article focuses on challenges DU faces with its partners in deciding not only where to invest our supporters’ money, but also how best to deliver our conservation work. The article also explains how DU biologists continually evaluate their conservation efforts, testing and retesting their assumptions on how to maximize duck production, and how to refine their tools and techniques in order to utilize the best available science when putting the most effective conservation projects to work.

Although we’re now working with advanced scientific tools and methods—computer models, GIS and satellite-imaging technology, among other space-age tools and know-how—on the prairies and elsewhere, our efforts in the Prairie Pothole Region go back to the days when DU biologists carried only pencils, clipboards, and other rudimentary tools. The biologists’ tools and knowledge have changed since DU began its early efforts in the prairies, but their passion—and the passion of all of us who support DU—for conserving ducks and native prairie landscapes has not.

What was clear to me from my most recent return to my roots is that while DU is committed to sustaining waterfowl populations wherever the birds need help, the prairie breeding grounds of southern Canada and the northern United States remain DU’s highest priority region for conservation. It’s no wonder we continue to refer to it as the “the duck factory.” I sincerely hope that many of you will have a chance to visit the grand spectacle of the prairie, to see how important this landscape is for the future of conservation and for duck hunting.

Maybe I’ll see you there.