Major Gifts & Planning

Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Awards $4 Million to the Lowcountry Conservation Partnership

The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation of New York, New York, has awarded a $4 million grant to Ducks Unlimited and other conservation partners to help conserve 60,000 acres of land in South Carolina. Other members of the Lowcountry Forest Conservation Partnership are Clemson University, The Conservation Fund, the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League, the Joseph W. Jones Ecological Research Center, the Lowcountry Open Land Trust, and The Nature Conservancy.

The majority of the grant will become a revolving fund to protect the most ecologically significant land in the state. The remaining $1.7 million will support the partners in addressing biological diversity, land protection, conservation forestry, urban sprawl, prescribed fire, and river hydrology restoration.
One of the most challenging frontiers for conservation is along the Atlantic Flyway, a region that has been profoundly altered by human development and a decline in land stewardship. Ducks Unlimited began working to conserve critical wildlife habitat in the South Carolina Lowcountry in 1985, and took its first conservation easement there in 1990. Today, Ducks Unlimited has conserved more than 100,000 acres of these internationally important coastal wetlands.

Public and Private Partnership Restores Superfund Dumpsite on the Texas Gulf Coast

A Texas Prairie Wetlands Project on property owned by Rodney Townsend Sr. and Rodney Townsend Jr., between Orange and Port Arthur, was dedicated on February 23, 2004. The dedication was hosted by the Sabine Chapter of Ducks Unlimited Inc.

The Townsends acquired the 200-acre property when it was a toxic dumpsite. It was subsequently cleaned up and restored to high-quality habitat for the Central Flyway’s migrating and wintering waterfowl. Partners in the restoration were Ducks Unlimited, Texas Parks & Wildlife, the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, North American Waterfowl Conservation Act, and the Nelda C. and H.J. Lutcher Stark Foundation of Orange, Texas.

Ducks Unlimited Receives $150,000 from the Charles B. and Lois B. Macauley Trust

Charles B. Macauley of San Mateo, California, was a loyal member of DU from 1977 until his death in 1997. He supported DU’s conservation efforts with annual gifts and made provisions within his family trust, which recently provided $150,000 to the Ducks Unlimited endowment. Estate gifts such as Macauley’s greatly further Ducks Unlimited’s conservation mission.

Diamond Legacy Sponsor Walker Foundation Continues Its Support of Scientific Research

The Walker Foundation of Jackson, Mississippi, recently awarded a generous grant of $65,000 to Ducks Unlimited’s Southern Regional Office to further develop its conservation planning information.

Several years ago, Ducks Unlimited initiated efforts to strengthen the biological foundation of conservation planning in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley, the most important wintering habitat for mallards in North America. Nearly 80 percent of this region’s bottomland hardwood forests and associated wetlands were lost in the last century. To ensure sound conservation planning for the region, Ducks Unlimited used remote-sensing and GIS techniques to construct a model to prioritize reforestation work. Earlier gifts from the Walker Foundation helped Ducks Unlimited build this first model.

The Walker Foundation’s current gift will allow conservation planning specialists to complete a flood probability data set component for all sites in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley. Understanding natural hydrology is critical to conservation planning because of the roles flooding plays in providing waterfowl habitat, ensuring the longevity of wetland restoration projects, and improving water quality. This component, along with others previously developed, will be combined into a forested wetland restoration priority model to direct future reforestation projects throughout the Mississippi Alluvial Valley. The results of this model will be posted on a Ducks Unlimited-designed Web site for easy distribution to all partner organizations, foresters, and other planners throughout the region.

The Walker Foundation’s ongoing support has helped position Ducks Unlimited as a leader in GIS technology. In 2003, ESRI, the world’s largest supplier of GIS software and services, selected Ducks Unlimited from more than 100,000 user sites worldwide to receive their Special Achievement in GIS award. The award showcases both the science behind Ducks Unlimited’s conservation planning and the benefits of our strong partnership with the Walker Foundation.

Charles R. Schwab Joins DU’s Efforts to Restore the Pintail by Issuing a $1 Million Challenge Grant

A loyal supporter of Ducks Unlimited for many years, Charles R. Schwab of San Francisco recently issued a $1 million challenge grant in support of The Pintail Initiative: A Race Against Time. Schwab stated that his gift represents the importance of his lifelong enjoyment of waterfowl. Gifts from other private sources will be matched.

During the 1990s, most North American waterfowl populations underwent dramatic recoveries and in most cases achieved historic high levels. Much of this was a result of the easing of the drought conditions on the breeding grounds. A notable exception to these amazing reversals was the pintail, whose population continued a downward slide from highs in the mid-1970s to only 1.8 million birds in the spring of 2002, a decline of greater than 80 percent. Today, pintail populations remain 68 percent below the North American Waterfowl Management Plan goals.

DU’s Pintail Initiative is the first step in the recovery of the pintail. The goal is to protect, restore, and enhance agricultural and natural habitats throughout the pintail’s range. Schwab is especially interested in one major component of the initiative: changing one million acres of spring cereals to winter cereals to eliminate harmful tilling during nesting season.

Wyoming Restorations Made Possible by Friends of Jackson Hole Ducks Unlimited and the George B. Storer Foundation

The wetland complex contained within the National Elk Refuge in Wyoming is a key location in the Rocky Mountain Range that serves as an important link for waterfowl between the Green River Basin in central Wyoming and the Centennial Valley in southern Montana. Because of the oxbow wetlands located along the Snake River and Flat Creek, which flow through the refuge, the Jackson Hole area has long provided quality breeding habitat and a critical migration stopover for ducks, geese, trumpeter swans, and cranes.

Refuge biologists use water-control structures to raise or lower water levels seasonally to produce the food migrating waterfowl need to continue on their way and that local ducks need to be successful at egg laying. This management capability came to a halt when several water-control structures that had served waterfowl well for many years began to crumble.

To launch the fund-raising effort to restore four critical wetland areas on the refuge, Walter and Mary Lou Lineberger, DU Major Donors and Diamond Feather Society members, hosted a reception for the Friends of Jackson Hole Ducks Unlimited. The George B. Storer Foundation, under the direction of president and treasurer Peter Storer, followed with a capping gift of $38,000, which secured the total costs of the projects. The George B. Storer Foundation, a Diamond Legacy Sponsor, has supported Ducks Unlimited’s conservation mission since 1980.

Thanks to the efforts of these dedicated supporters, Ducks Unlimited is now restoring the wetlands by using the most up-to-date engineering methods to build environmentally sound water-control structures that will last for decades. Although elk and bison still play center stage there, the National Elk Refuge is an important hub for much of the waterfowl activity in this area that, acre for acre, rivals habitat anywhere on the continent.