Easements are vital to rescuing the duck factory

Among the greatest threats currently facing waterfowl populations is the loss of native grassland in the Prairie Pothole Region. When this vital habitat is converted to other uses, the impact on breeding ducks is twofold. First, when large tracts of upland cover are lost or fragmented, nesting success and hen survival decline dramatically on the landscape. Second, wetland quality and integrity is also adversely impacted by sedimentation and agricultural runoff. Degraded wetlands support fewer broods and provide less nutritional resources for pairs of ducks arriving on the breeding grounds in spring. Thus grassland easements not only protect vital upland nesting cover, but also the wetlands that drive the productivity of the Duck Factory.

For more than a decade, Ducks Unlimited and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have worked together to purchase grassland easements from willing ranchers and protect vital native prairie in the Dakotas and Montana.

In 2008, DU launched the Rescue the Duck Factory campaign to raise additional funding specifically for grassland easements. Since the campaign began, donations made by DU's passionate and generous supporters have helped protect 130,000 acres of the most important waterfowl habitat on this continent. Over the past decade, DU, the USFWS, and private landowners have permanently protected 918,550 acres of grasslands and wetlands on the U.S. prairies via easements.

Darin Blunck is director of conservation programs at DU national headquarters in Memphis.

For more information on DU's efforts to reinstate and make permanent an enhanced tax benefit for conservation easement donors, visit the DU Public Policy web page at www.ducks.org/publicpolicy and sign up for the weekly Conservation Issues Briefing e-newsletter to stay current on this and other public policy priorities.