Outdoors: Disappearing prairies leave North Dakota ducks fewer places to nest

Tim Eisele
Special to The Capital Times
 —  7/18/2008 4:13 pm

Bismarck, N.D. -- People who enjoy waterfowl will need to readjust their thinking and should expect to see fewer ducks in the future.

The reasons are the two primary ingredients necessary for ducks to nest: water and adjacent undisturbed grasslands.

Although southern Wisconsin was inundated by abundant water this past June, the heart of the prairie pothole region, North Dakota, was dry. Many potholes did not receive water until late June, which many biologists believe was too late for ducks to nest.

A North Dakota Game and Fish Department survey of wetlands this year showed that wetlands were down more than 50 percent from the long-term average and 70 percent from last year. Drought conditions often come and go, and after a decade of good water it is logical to expect dry prairie conditions to stay for a while.

Besides water, ducks need nearby grasslands where they can nest. One reason for the abundant nesting habitat during the past 20 years is the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) which provided thousands of acres of grasslands. But that is changing as high commodity prices encourage farmers to pull land out of CRP and put it into crop production.

The result is fewer nesting areas which will impact many species of wildlife in the coming years, especially waterfowl.

Concerns on the prairie

Terry Steinwand, commissioner of the North Dakota Game and Fish Department, anticipates a major loss of CRP acres. North Dakota had a high of 3 million acres in CRP in 2006, but in 2007 lost about 400,000 of those acres and could lose another 1.9 million acres of CRP by 2012.

"A USDA study said that for every 4 percent increase in CRP acreage, there is a 22 percent increase in pheasants. In 1985 the North Dakota pheasant harvest was 130,000 birds but it increased to 800,000 in 2007. Hunting opportunities bring hunters and that means jobs," Steinwand said. "With reductions in CRP, we will see hunter numbers decrease."

Hunter license dollars pay the operations of state wildlife agencies and this will hurt wildlife operations.

CRP is not only beneficial in producing many species of wildlife (game and nongame), but it also helps reduce sediment and pollutant runoff into rivers and lakes, and provides hunting, hiking and wildlife watching.

Steinwand said that farmers are working on a thin profit margin and can't be blamed for trying to make a profit, but CRP acres will be lost as they switch to growing commodities.

The prairie pothole region is comprised of 300,000 square miles, of which one-third is in the U.S. It is the best of the best in terms of native grasslands interspersed with potholes.

"This is duck central," said Jim Ringelman, Ducks Unlimited director of Conservation programs in Bismarck, N.D. "But the duck factory is being eroded as it is turned into cropland."

Grasslands are at the top of the list in terms of risk of loss. But, Ringelman said the big driver is oil and energy, not really agriculture. The number of acres of corn in North Dakota, normally not a corn state, is up 54 percent, and by 2009 one-third will be used for ethanol.

New varieties of corn with shorter maturation dates and more drought tolerance are being used in the heart of duck country. These are areas where there has now been a large drop in the number of acres that were in CRP.

On the bright side is the potential for switchgrass being used for producing energy, which could benefit ducks. Interest in carbon sequestration could also benefit grasslands, which absorb carbon dioxide, according to Ringelman,

"In the next five years, carbon may be the biggest commodity market in the world," Ringelman said. "For eons society has had an unbalanced accounting system, and now we may begin to value the ecological commodities such as water quality, clean air and biodiversity. Landowners could now receive payments for protecting grasslands with easements when we purchase carbon sequestration rights."

CRP helps U.S. ducks

John Devney, senior vice president of Delta Waterfowl, stresses the importance of the Farm Bill, and CRP, to the future of ducks.

The U.S. has had the CRP program since the mid-1980s, while Canada has not. Devney explains that breeding population of mallards in Canada was very high in the 1950s but has steadily declined without a CRP program to set aside grasslands.

Meanwhile the U.S. breeding population of mallards has had a tremendous increase during that period.

Devney believes that farmers and ranchers are willing to be partners to conserve habitat, but there must be an incentive for them.

"Policy and land use drives productivity, and the fall flights that duck hunters depend on," Devney said.

Tim Eisele is a full-time freelance outdoor writer and photographer. He is a founding member and past president of the Wisconsin Outdoor Communicators Association and active member of the Outdoor Writers Association of America. 

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DUCK RESEARCH SHOWS VALUE OF CRP

Ron Reynolds, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service habitat and population evaluation team leader, has numbers that duck hunters should find of interest.

Research has showed that nest success (followed by duckling survival and breeding hen survival) is the number one factor in how large duck populations are. In total, 90 percent of the critical factors for duck population increases are based on the breeding grounds.

The limiting factors of any population are births and deaths, and puddle duck nesting success has been declining from 30 percent to about 10 percent, largely due to depredation by predators.

"Half of the hen loss is on the breeding grounds," Reynolds said. "In the spring the birds are very territorial, and they don't concentrate like they do in the fall. We need a distribution of nesting cover and water, which is why small wetland areas are important."

Most ducks need about 15 percent to 18 percent nesting success to stabilize their populations, and research has shown that nest success in CRP went up from about 10 percent prior to CRP to 23 percent. CRP enabled ducks to actually "grow" their populations, Reynolds said.

Although CRP only made up about 7 percent of the nesting areas, Reynolds said that nearly 30 percent of all hatched nests in the prairie pothole region come from CRP lands.

CRP began with the 1985 Farm Bill and actually began on the landscape around 1987. Reynolds' research took place from 1982 to 2006 to measure the changes.

"The bottom line to our research is that we estimated about 26 million additional ducks fledged with CRP on the landscape compared to what we would have expected without CRP," Reynolds said. "CRP is really significant. Our carrying capacity of breeding ducks has increased."

The 1985 Farm Bill, which brought about CRP, was the most significant piece of legislation involving agriculture for wildlife populations.

Tim Eisele
Special to The Capital Times
 —  7/18/2008 4:13 pm