Insights

By Don Young, Executive Vice President
Investing in Waterfowl Futures

Ducks Unlimited's conservation programs continue to pay big dividends for the birds

No other single private entity has been a bigger investor in the waterfowl stock market than Ducks Unlimited. The first installments on duck futures were made 63 years ago. The organization's founding fathers-ardent duck hunters to a man-can be considered no less than conservation pioneers. They recognized there was a problem across the prime waterfowl production area and set about seeing what they could do to help the birds they treasured. I think they would be pleased today to see how far their vision has advanced.

These days, Ducks Unlimited, with its landowner partners and its public and private supporters, continues to make investments of hundreds of millions of dollars on behalf of sportsmen and others who enjoy waterfowl and appreciate the value of wetland habitat. The DU portfolio, one might say, has grown to enormous proportions.

This growth includes the North American Waterfowl Management Plan, which has evolved into the most successful wildlife management program ever, and, in the United States, the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), and the Wetland Reserve Program (WRP). Through its participation in and support of these and other programs, Ducks Unlimited has been instrumental in developing, maintaining, expanding, restoring, and improving habitats that benefit waterfowl, of course, but also hundreds of other species.

Still, our primary focus is on ducks. In Canada alone, Ducks Unlimited has conserved more than 4.5 million acres of habitat and provided protection to several million more acres through land-use agreements. Mother Nature has been kind the past several years, providing adequate rainfall and snowfall to complement the habitat base prepared and enhanced by our efforts. The resultant fall flights of ducks have registered record-breaking proportions. The birds are dividends that we all thrill to see whenever we go afield. The bottom line is, our investments are producing ducks.

As for the future, Ducks Unlimited will continue to be an aggressive participant in waterfowl and wetlands habitat conservation. Our investments now include trying to establish a program in Canada similar to CRP, via policy work federally and in the prairie provinces. We also are promoting the expansion of CRP and WRP in the United States, expanding the scope of our scientific research, and adjusting our programs to ensure that wherever the ducks go, they will find habitat of the highest quality.

It is unlikely that Ducks Unlimited's founders could have predicted the impact their efforts would eventually have on continental waterfowl populations. This is one investment that is still reaping dividends.