Conservation
By James K. Ringelman, Ph.D.
Learning Together
A legacy of research has brought DU and its partners to the cutting edge of waterfowl conservation Ducks Unlimited has never been a go-it-alone organization. Since our inception we have partnered with like-minded agencies and landowners to cost-share, develop, and manage habitat projects from Canada to Mexico.
Less well known, however, is the collaborative research and planning that occurs before the first shovel of dirt is turned. A look back reveals some fascinating work that changed the course of waterfowl conservation.
In the late 1970s, radio transmitters were developed that were small enough to be carried by a duck. For the first time, ducks showed us the habitats they liked and how successful they were at nesting. Among the sobering discoveries was the low nest success experienced by ducks throughout much of the prairies. This finding caused conservationists to shift their focus to understanding and predicting nesting success in different habitats.
Desktop computers had just come of age, so scientists at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's (USFWS) Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center, along with biologists from DU and elsewhere, began building a simulation model that "settled" ducks in different nesting habitats based on the height and density of the cover.
The Secret to Nesting Success If you're a predator searching several square miles of grassland for a meal, encountering a duck nest would seem like a long shot. But suppose that the nests are concentrated in small patches and in thin strips of grass. Suddenly, your odds are looking up. Although intuitive, the relationship between nest success and grassland expanse was only recently confirmed by USFWS biologists while evaluating the benefits of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) to ducks.
Now, DU researcher Scott Stephens is delving deeper into this important topic. Is this relationship linear? Does it hold for native prairie as well as CRP? After just one year of field work, the answers remain elusive. But one thing's for sure-there are lots of nesting ducks in North Dakota.
"I told my field crews that I would buy the first celebratory round of beer if we found 700 duck nests this year," Stephens says. "By July, we had surpassed 2,200 nests, and we're still going!" Budweiser, anyone?
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Nesting success was also predicted, and managers were allowed to enact management actions that redistributed the digital ducks and altered recruitment rates. The result was the "mallard model," a tool still used today to guide management actions.
The newest doors have been opened by still more powerful computers loaded with geographic information systems (GIS) software. After the USFWS completed the monumental task of mapping and classifying all of the millions of wetlands in the Prairie Pothole Region, biologists with its Habitat and Population Evaluation Team (HAPET) were able to craft the "thunderstorm maps" that depict the predicted numbers of breeding ducks in the Dakotas.
Now, in cooperation with HAPET, DU is completing a map of land cover in the same region. By knowing where ducks settle and where duck-friendly nesting cover exists, DU and our conservation partners will be on the same page when it comes to habitat conservation planning and the most efficient allocation of our resources.
How do young ducks find their way? In nearly all waterfowl species, young birds return to breeding areas at much lower rates than adult females: Only about 27 percent of canvasback young return to the area where they were hatched. This is mostly because young do not survive as well as adults. For those that make it through the winter, how do they find their hatch area? This is an unsolved mystery, but they likely use some of the navigation mechanisms mentioned in the text.
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