EP 465. US “Duck Factory” Productivity — How Bad is It?

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast, where today I’m asking the question, do we have as many ducks as we did 10, 15, 20 years ago? What do you all think? Where the heck are the ducks if we don’t have them? Why or why not don’t we have them? I want to go to the source. I want to go to the duck factory. I want to go up to the prairies, because I’ve got this feeling that we don’t have the habitat now that we did 10, 15, 20 years ago. Joining me to help me sort through this duck factory question is Scott Stephens and Johannes Walker. Guys, how are you all this morning?

Scott Stephens: We are good and always happy to talk about ducks.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I know you are. Why don’t you all introduce yourself? Scott, I know that, you’ve been with Ducks Unlimited Canada, and you’re moving back south of the border, are you?

Scott Stephens: Yeah, that’s correct. So, Scott Stephens, my new title is Senior Director of Prairie and Boreal Conservation strategy. But you’re right, Ramsey, I started my career with Ducks Unlimited, Inc. Spent about 15 years, most of that in the Bismarck office, focused on the Prairie pothole region, moved to Canada about 13 years ago, worked across the Prairies and the boreal here in Canada, and have just transitioned back to the US to still focus on the prairies and the boreal forest and helping our teams make as much progress on habitat there as they can. So that’s kind of me.

Ramsey Russell: Johannes, how are you this morning?

Johannes Walker: I’m doing just fine, Ramsey. Thanks for the invitation. And I’ll give you a little background on me, too. I came to work for Ducks Unlimited in 2005 here in the Great Plains region as a research biologist. I’m now the Director of Operations for the Great Plains region, which is 7 states, Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, Nebraska and of course, what we’re talking about today, the Dakotas and Montana. And so that covers a lot of the real estate on the breeding grounds in the US. And we have teams that are involved in science and policy and in direct conservation programming with private landowners and public agencies across that whole geography.

Ramsey Russell: Where did you grow up, Johannes?

Johannes Walker: I grew up in western Montana, in Missoula.

Ramsey Russell: Really? Did you grow up a duck hunter in Missoula?

Johannes Walker: I did. Was sort of an off the wall thing to be, right. Everybody else was going elk hunting, and here we were out running the rivers and looking for backwater slews and shooting ducks. And people would often say, I don’t know why you all get so excited about ducks, but at that time in western Montana and those river valleys, the hunting was pretty good for that very reason. There weren’t that many of us.

Missoula Duck Hunting Back in the Day

And I had lots of good spots, and I shot 4 mallards a day every day for one season. I remember doing that almost the entire season.

Ramsey Russell: What was the duck hunting like back in those days as compared to these days?

Johannes Walker: Well, I have a hard time separating then because my memory is, you all might relate to this, but my memory has kind of deteriorated some, I suspect. But I had great duck hunts then, and I had poor duck hunts then, and I still have the same now. And it depends on where I am and when I’m there and where the birds are at. Right? So the thing that I put my finger on just a minute ago seems much more important to me in retrospect. How much pressure was there on the areas that we hunted? I mean, even, I’ll tell you, at some of my best duck hunting during the years with restrictive seasons in the Pacific flyway, 60 days, 75 days, 4 ducks. I had a lot of free time, which is something I don’t have as much of now. And I had lots of good spots, and I shot 4 mallards a day every day for one season. I remember doing that almost the entire season.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Johannes Walker: So it’s more complicated than were there more than now. And I can’t even really compare the prairies because I wasn’t out here.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, it seems like there were more then back when I was in college and had all that time, it could go just about anywhere and shoot a mallard duck. Scott, you and I used to hunt some public land down in Mississippi, when you were at Mississippi State. And what are your thoughts? Did it seem like there were more ducks then than now?

Scott Stephens: Well, yeah, and I have the same challenge. I spent time down there during that period, but I haven’t been back much, Ramsey, in more contemporary times. So that was kind of 1992 through 1995 or so that I was down there. And what I recall is I recall the 1993 season was 3 ducks. And then I think in 1994, maybe we went to, like, 4 ducks and then I think it was 1995, we transitioned to adaptive harvest management, and things changed, and things have been pretty liberal since then. But I had some great duck hunts when it was three ducks. Sometimes it was over too darn quick. You’d shoot two mallards, and in that part of the world, you’d shoot a green winged teal, usually.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Scott Stephens: And then your day was done. But I would also say that in the past 5 years, I’ve had some spectacular hunts up here in Canadian prairies. Hunts that if I show people video of the ducks coming in after we’re done, like, they hardly believe it. So, like Johan said, I think, individual harvest success, there are a lot of factors that flow into that. And I suspect that many of us also had good hunting seasons during those drought periods when the limit was pretty low, you just got to be in the right spot and on the right day, and things work pretty well.

Ramsey Russell: Well, Scott, you talk about hunting up there in Canada prairie, and you and I have had the opportunity the past few years to hunt together. And I think there’s a misconception that crossing that Canadian border just ensures magical bag limits over dry fields. But you and I have, we’ve had some great hunts together and some duck hunts together, just regular duck hunts. It’s not always a guarantee, is it?

Scott Stephens: No, it’s not. And I would like to think, Ramsey, that the 3 of us talking here have enough experience now or I mean, at least for me, I’m probably pushing 30 years of chasing ducks.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Scott Stephens: I’d like to think that maybe we’re, the odds of us having a good hunt are a little better than average. And you’re exactly right. Like, this past year, Johan and I and another colleague connected in Saskatchewan, and we got to our usual spot, and it was dry. There were no ducks there, so we had to pick up and move all the way across the province. We started in dam near Alberta, ended up along the Manitoba border, and we shot some ducks, but it was not easy. They were not super cooperative. We had a couple good hunts, but yeah, it’s not always lights out, limits every day, that kind of thing. So, makes you appreciate those days more, I think, when you have a few that humble you.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Basically want to just get back after them. You know what I’m saying? The truth of the matter is, when I look back in time, I remember the limits, I remember those days that it was over too quick. But I also just remember duck hunting in the past and some of my favorite memories, I couldn’t tell you how many ducks we shot. I went back and found a picture from 30 years ago, a certain picture I found of me and a late friend of mine. And I could not have told you how many ducks we shot until there, in a 30 year old picture was us holding those 5 mallards. It could have been limits. It could have been, who knows? I couldn’t tell you, I just remember how fun it was that morning. And that’s kind of magic that keeps me going. Scott, we talked about a month ago, I was on a search for numbers, I don’t feel like that we have the habitat now that we did yesteryear. Pick a spot in time 5 years ago, 10, 15, 20, a 100, I don’t think we have the habitat, I think we continue losing habitat due to civilization and urban sprawl and everything else, agricultural practices. But I’m learning that it’s kind of hard to quantify, especially when you start getting down to the wintering grounds. There may not be the technology to accurately quantify this. And as we were talking, you said, well, we just gave a presentation at Duck Symposium, talking about the duck factory, about the nesting ground, and we do have an idea of how many – that’s what I want to talk about, because it’s all about production. Good years, bad years, about how many can you produce? And so I think this would be a great conversation to start with, is I’ll just throw the question out like this. How big is the duck factory? How productive is the duck factory now versus yesteryear?

Canada Waterfowl Population Changes

After 2011, we saw those numbers grow to kind of the peak of about 50 million total ducks, and then they bounced around there a little bit, and that was about 2015, we saw that peak.

Scott Stephens: Yeah. And maybe I’ll start to provide some context and head us down that path and then Johan can jump in, because he helped develop the presentation that I gave in Portland in February to talk about this. It was kind of a look at status of the prairies, and for better or for worse, Ramsey, the year that we anchored to for the comparison of more contemporary times was 2011, and that was a year that we picked, because that was kind of the last year that I think we thought we had widespread, very good wetland conditions across most of the prairie pothole region in the US and in Canada. So I know when we look at what the populations did after that, and I’ve got a graph up here that’s total ducks. After 2011, we saw those numbers grow to kind of the peak of about 50 million total ducks, and then they bounced around there a little bit, and that was about 2015, we saw that peak. And now in the last survey, last year, we were down to about 33 million total ducks or something like that. Yeah. So below the long term average of the ups and downs. So we saw that boom, we saw what we would have expected when wet conditions, but since then, we’ve seen declines. And I know, one thing that we should talk about is, you’ve got the habitat base, but then it doesn’t do you much good if things go dry. And we’re currently in a situation where things are pretty dry across both the US and Canadian prairies. But I think what if you ask Johan and I, if we got wet tomorrow, would we have the same response by the ducks to the water? I think our answer right now would be, we don’t think so, because we have lost habitat. So, Johan, maybe I’ll pause there and let you provide color, too.

Ramsey Russell: 50 million ducks in 2015, and some of the most recent estimates is 33 million. Any idea how many of those were mallards?

Scott Stephens: We definitely would have the graphic for mallards, Ramsey, I just didn’t have that up in the presentation. I know, I remember having this discussion with Mike Brazier in January, though, where the number of mallards that was counted in the spring count last year, 80% of the surveys count more mallards than we counted in 2023. So populations have come down. Now, probably most of that is because things have gone dry. And not that unexpected, given the environmental conditions across the prairies. But the question is, is the habitat base there to support the growth of those populations back to peaks, when we get wet again. Johan, I’ll let you get in here, too.

Mallard Numbers

And in the last couple of years, as Scott was saying, we’ve been below that, something south of 8 million, looks like last year we were closer to 6.

Johannes Walker: I’m just pulling up that mallard graphic right now, so, just a second, guys. So, Ramsey, we’re looking at the mallard population sort of travel varying, and I’m trying now, I zoomed in too far. A mallard population somewhere between about 5 million and a little bit north of 12, 13 million. So in those boom years that Scott was just talking about, those are the records in the data since 1960. The highest mallard populations were around 12,13 million birds. And that includes the entire breeding grounds that are surveyed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service and Canadian Wildlife Service. Long term average, there is 7.7 million. And in the last couple of years, as Scott was saying, we’ve been below that, something south of 8 million, looks like last year we were closer to 6. And I could get down to the tables, but I think, yeah, your point is made. We have come down from peaks and there are fewer mallards out there and like Scott was saying, fewer mallards in 4 out of 5, or this is fewer mallards than you would see in 4 out of 5 randomly chosen years from that series. So we are low on mallards, but I’d say, just sort of extending the discussion a little bit that most of that in that 5 or 6 year period is just the result of expanding and intensifying drought across those breeding regions. Scott said a couple of times that those few years, 2011, 2012, 2013, those were pretty special because you had wet conditions and freshly wet wetlands. They’ve been a little bit dry and then they got wet, and that’s a big deal, we can talk about that, too. But they got wet and they got wet from Edmonton, Alberta, all the way to Des Moines Isle. There was habitat everywhere during that time because the wetlands were so wet. That hasn’t been true. It’s been steadily getting, going the other direction.

Ramsey Russell: So the last time we had somewhere around 10 million breeding mallards would have been that 11 to 15 timeframe, is that right?

Johannes Walker: We probably still had close to 10, even in 2017 or so, but yeah.

The Impact of Losing Grasslands & Wetlands

Ramsey Russell: And that’s about when this prairie started to dry up, is that right? So, we’re not only just looking at – You all were explaining before we started, we got two things going on. We’ve got environmental conditions, wetness, and we’ve got habitat loss, grasslands, is that right?

Scott Stephens: Grasslands and wetlands, I would say.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Scott Stephens: And those two, are both changing. And we know that sometimes when we have wet conditions, it can kind of mask habitat loss for a little while, we think. And sometimes when it’s dry, we could have a bunch of habitat restored out there, and we wouldn’t see the benefit of it yet, because as we all know, ducks like water, and they’re not taking advantage of the grassland if all the wetlands are dry. Yeah, so we have both of those things sort of moving at the same time. So it does become a little bit difficult to separate the individual impacts of wetness and habitat because they’re both moving.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. So let’s talk about one or the other then. We can pick environmental conditions if we want to, and talk about the wetness in the wetlands and trend through time as these populations are plummeted, or we can pick the habitat loss. Because I know that CRP is a big one up there now, am I right?

Scott Stephens: Yeah, maybe. Johan, you want to talk about the graphs that we had in that presentation for the upland loss that we’ve seen since about 2009?

Joint Ventures and the North American Waterfowl Management Plan

So, I have some data compiled by the North American Waterfowl Management plan, joint ventures. Scott made some reference to that. And several of the joint ventures, which are, at will, groups of partners who do science and conservation together in support of the plan, got together in the center of the country and inventoried the loss of grassland.

Johannes Walker: Yeah. So, I have some data compiled by the North American Waterfowl Management plan, joint ventures. Scott made some reference to that. And several of the joint ventures, which are, at will, groups of partners who do science and conservation together in support of the plan, got together in the center of the country and inventoried the loss of grassland. And again, for the listeners, we know grassland is pretty important for not only keeping wetlands intact, because wetlands that are embedded in grassland don’t tend to get drained, and also for nesting cover. This is where most of the ducks that we like to hunt, like to nest, is in those grasslands surrounding the wetlands. And so we quantified how much grassland has been lost in the last, since 2009. The stretch here is 2009 to 2021. So it includes part of the time period we were just talking about. 19% of the grassland in the Dakotas and Montana and Iowa and Minnesota was lost during that time. Something more than 7 million acres. And most of that was CRP, as you point out. A good bit of it, too, as you said in an earlier comment, capital. It was native grassland that had never before been converted to cropland. So we lost almost 7 million acres just in the US prairie pothole region. Then another over 2 million acres in the western part of the Dakotas. And south central Montana, which is also part of the bird survey that we were talking about a minute ago. So just 11 million acres on the US breeding grounds alone of grass lost in that period.

Ramsey Russell: 11 million acres.

Johannes Walker: Yeah. And that’s massive, right? That’s the thing that’s got Scott and I kind of bet hedging here, because what scientists call this situation is confounding. Drought is confounded with habitat loss, we’d say if we were hanging out with a bunch of other scientists. And what that means is it’s difficult to separate them until one moves and the other stays the same. So what we anticipate, what we’ve been talking about a little bit, is when that drought situation breaks and it gets wet again in the prairies, what do we expect, given all of that habitat loss that we just talked about? And what I would expect is that we won’t go back to 50 million ducks, we’ll go back to something less, unless we’re successful at replacing that lost habitat.

Ramsey Russell: If we’ve lost 11 million acres on the US side of the border since 2009, Scott any idea of what’s happening on the north side of the border?

Scott Stephens: Yeah, we have similar estimates. The joint venture that operates in the Canadian prairies is the prairie habitat joint venture. And the estimate for that same time period, Ramsey, was about a million and a half acres. So not the scale that we saw in the US, but still, the trend is going in the negative. So that’s kind of the story on upland acres, which we know from Johan and I spent years and years doing research, looking at things like nest survival. And we know that factors that influence nest survival for ducks are things like how much grassland is in the surrounding landscape, how much nesting habitat the patch that they’re nesting in is. So we know that less grass has negative impacts on reproduction. So that’s really what we’re getting at here, because the birds settle and get the food resources that they need from the wetlands. But it’s that reproductive success that we think is impacted by the grassland. So that’s why we talk about that.

Ramsey Russell: So it’s not just how many acres we’re losing. Like, I couldn’t even guess how many millions of ducks, 13 million acres, could produce as a nesting habitat. But it’s not like you’re just taking it out of a big block. You’re also increasing the fragmentation of that nesting habitat, making those hens more susceptible to predation or anything.

Scott Stephens: Yeah, that’s right. And when we think about the way that those population dynamics work on the prairies, we also know that an important factor is how many of those females that are breeding survive the breeding season. And we know that the more time they have to sit on the nest, the more vulnerable they are. So when nest survival goes down as a result of impacts on the landscape, like less grass, not only do we have lower nest success, but we probably have lower female survival, too. And so, those are two, as biologists, we would call them vital rates in the annual cycle that are very important and impact population dynamics significantly. So both of those impacted by loss of grassland.

What Contributed to the Loss of Waterfowl Habitats?

So I’d say the biggest thing driving that loss has been changes in the agricultural economy globally. 

Ramsey Russell: What happened that contributed to basically 11 million acres of CRP coming out of production, coming out of CRP contract, what happened? How did we build up to such a – like, I think I read online at one time, we had over 30 million acres of CRP, not just in the prairie pothole, but concentrated there, and then now it’s considerably less, it’s a third less what happened in history to contribute to that loss?

Johannes Walker: So I’d say the biggest thing driving that loss has been changes in the agricultural economy globally. But changes in policy, changes in technology that have led to a rapid expansion of cropland across that area, including on those lands that were enrolled in the conservation reserve program. Now, those lands were enrolled, like we talked about earlier today, in that program, partly to reduce supply in the early 1980s of commodities. So when demand for commodities went up in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, because of things like policy to use ethanol, policy to sort of promote corn and soybean expansion, drought tolerant varieties, increased growing seasons. All of those things are in this mix. But the bottom line is commodities became a lot more valuable and were a lot more competitive with conservation as a land use practice. And so most of that conservation came out. Now, you’ve referenced 35 million acres, and the USDA is working their way back there. But a lot of those acres aren’t showing up in the prairie pothole region anymore. Our soils aren’t quite as erodible as some of the soils in the southern Great Plains and other places like that. So you may hear along the way that there’s still 30 plus million acres of CRP out there. But where they are is different now than that.

Ramsey Russell: We want them in the duck factory. That’s where I want them.

Scott Stephens: Yeah. And I would add, Ramsey, that, yeah, my short answer was going to be economics is what’s driven that change. I mean, you think back to the late 80s things were tough in the Ag economy then, right? We had farm aid and all that kind of stuff where things were darn tough. More recently, it’s been different. Like, Johan, I know last week when we talked, there were stats about record levels of net farm income in North Dakota in the past couple years. So there is nobody looking to set aside agricultural land that can produce commodities on it. And I would also say that those policies, many of which happen in the US, don’t just affect US acres. When there’s greater demand for cropland, that translates into market prices that affect canola, affect wheat, and those same impacts translate right across the border into Canada.

Ramsey Russell: Sure.

Scott Stephens: So we’ve seen record high levels of prices for like, canola, given demand for it as an oil seed, given demand for it to be used in things like biodiesel. And that has increased that pressure on land. There’s demand for more land to be in production that comes at the expense of either grassland or wetlands in the prairies writ large.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. When you enroll in CRP, it’s usually a 10 or 15 year contract. So did all that land just expire or seems like I remember a politician writing some language that let a lot of farmers opt out when those commodity prices got high. When would that have been?

Johannes Walker: So, I think that was proposed along the way, Ramsey. But I think almost all the loss we’re talking about right now was from expiring contracts over time. Contracts that were enrolled as far back as 1986, re enrolled in 1997, re-enrolled in 2007. And so they expired on that ten to 15 year cycle. A 2007 re-enrollment would have expired in 2017, right around the time we’re talking about. So just natural expirations was the biggest part of it. I mean, I heard that same kind of talk you were talking about, but I don’t think that ever really happened. It happened here and there, but that wasn’t the driver. Scott’s got it. It’s economics, and it’s the farm economy, and it does reach well beyond US borders.

Ramsey Russell: Basically, I just let my contract expire because I can make more money growing commodities than I can with the rental rate. It’s just simple economics.

Johannes Walker: Yeah. The kind of stories we heard during that time is, hey, I had my whole farm, an older producer who was retired might have put a whole farm into CRP and generated income that way off their land. But as those commodity prices went up, they’d say things like, neighbors are knocking on my door, asking me how long it is before my contract expires because they want to rent this ground from me to farm it. So those are the kind of realities, those are the real decisions that folks face up here about whether to keep things in habitat or whether to farm.

Ramsey Russell: Does CRP, does this Conservation Reserve Program acreage, these grasslands, does that make up the bulk of existing nesting habitat in the prairie? Is that what we’re down to, or is there some other areas? And what kind of relative acres are we talking about?

Scott Stephens: Yeah, you want to talk about that for the US, Johan?

Johannes Walker: Sure, and I apologize, I don’t have tight numbers sitting right in front of me. But I would say, we talked about a couple 3 million acres of CRP, maybe more, at the peak in the Dakotas in Montana, you’re talking about another, tens of millions, twenties of millions of acres of native grassland. So CRP is an important booster in wetland rich landscapes, is the way I think about it. But it’s not the base. The base is that previously undisturbed pasture ground that people use for raising beef cattle on that’s been here since glaciation, probably started that. That’s the stuff that we really keep an eye on. And there’s a fair amount of that rolled up in that large number I gave you earlier, that 11 million acre.

Scott Stephens: Yeah. And obviously, on the Canadian side of the border, there was no CRP program but there’s a mix of native grassland. There’s a mix of hay land, alfalfa fields that are cut for hay, those provide nesting habitat for ducks, keep the wetlands intact. There would be a number of those kind of acres out there, and tens of millions of them across the Canadian prairies. Because remember, acre wise, about 2/3rd of the acreage is on the Canada side of the border, 1/3rd on the US side. So, it’s a big geography, there are big acres out there. But, yeah, I think Johan has it right. CRP was an important component and corresponded with providing habitat at the time before we got wet in that, mid 90s and onward. But it’s not the bulk of the acres that are out there, especially now.

Ramsey Russell: Have you all ever been able to go back? And even if you just had to guesstimate, I know you all used 2011 as a base, but how would that compare to, say, 1911? What would the prairies look like if we went back 100 years ago? Any guesstimate?

Technological Limitations in Converting Grassland to Cropland

It’s like teams of horses and so just the technology to convert grassland to cropland and the drain wetlands was way different back then. So I think we would have said there would have been way more grass, there would have been way more wetlands and probably the fall flights that happened during those time periods.

Scott Stephens: Yeah, well, I think you’re left with us kind of speculating, but, yeah, there would have been way more grass out there. 1911, many of the communities across the prairies would have just been settled at that point in time. I mean, think about technology back then. Ramsay, there’s a small hotel in western Saskatchewan that I stay in, and it shows pictures from turn of the century and they’re hard to believe. It’s like teams of horses and so just the technology to convert grassland to cropland and the drain wetlands was way different back then. So I think we would have said there would have been way more grass, there would have been way more wetlands and probably the fall flights that happened during those time periods would have been spectacular, right? I mean, there aren’t many people still alive who witnessed them, but somebody would have witnessed them, and I think they would have been impressive. And probably, here’s another speculation. The limitation probably back then would have been on wintering areas and whether you had enough food to feed all those birds and whether it was dry in the south, whether rivers flooded or not. And which is a different condition than we have today. We now would say limitations to population size are on breeding areas, not on wintering areas. That probably wasn’t true historically.

Ramsey Russell: I was born 100 years too late. I knew it. But when you go back not even 100 years ago, go back 50, 60 years ago, as you’re driving through the Canadian prairie, through the Dakotas, you see these little monuments, these little schoolhouse monuments, these little historical markers, and it’s where a school was. And you drive 2 or 3 miles down the road, and there’s another one. And 2 or 3 miles down the road, and there’s another one. There’s all these schools proliferated across the prairies, because back in the day, all the farms were just 160 acres. Just these little bitty two mules and a plow team of horses and a plow farms, and all these kids could walk a mile or so to the school. And that in and of itself, versus now going to anywhere up in the prairies and seeing plowed fields clear out to the horizon. It’s a completely changing landscape. We could say, maybe, if you had to guess, what percent do we have existing in the prairie to include the native grasslands and pasture and CRP? Is it 20% even of what it may have been 100 years ago?

Scott Stephens: Yeah. Johan, help me.

Ramsey Russell: If you just had to guess.

Scott Stephens: Yeah, I know. We have some ballpark estimates for remaining grassland from historic and the Canadian prairies were probably in that 25% or 30%, I suspect. Johan, what would you guys be in the Dakotas?

Johannes Walker: Of grassland probably about half of it, or a little less, depending on where you look. And that would be true in the Dakotas, for example, and probably about half of the original, sort of pre settlement wetlands.

Scott Stephens: Yeah.

Johannes Walker: Right. But in places like Iowa, you’ve got 10% left. In places like Montana, you may have 70%.

Scott Stephens: Yeah.

Johannes Walker: But, yeah. The habitat change, the conversion to agriculture has been pretty widespread. And despite that, kind of like we were talking about a little before, whatever we had in that period of time between 2012 and 2017 was enough between the prairies and the breeding grounds farther north to put 50 million ducks on the survey. So even if we quibble about the exact number in the survey, that was still a record going all the way back to 1960. And set records for 3 or 4 years in a row. So there were a lot of ducks out there, and the landscape was supporting those for multiple years. So that’s kind of one of the places I take hope from. Is that we kind of have a sense of a landscape that produces enough ducks to keep duck hunters busy and to maintain this beautiful animal migration across North America. That has been going on for thousands of years and all the traditions that are connected to that. So that’s a hopeful thought, but the last few years have made it, clear to us if we don’t like what’s happening right now with this drought, we really won’t like having the water come back to less habitat and fewer birds in the future. And that’s really the thing I focus on. I focus my career on that. The idea that we can, working in partnership with private landowners across this landscape, find a way to help agriculture and ducks coexist at levels that are, for lack of a better word, meaningful. And the thing that troubles me is the thing we’ve kind of been talking about a bit here is the loss that’s been going on while we’ve been getting drier. That’s our capital. Our capital isn’t the birds we have, it’s really tough to stockpile. Ducks on average, live 2 to 2.5 years. What we’re counting on is that they can be productive when the opportunity is there to be productive, and that means that habitats got to be there, and then it’s got to get wet.

Scott Stephens: Yeah. And I think thus far we’ve covered kind of, hey, we’ve seen significant loss of grassland, which we know impacts reproductive success and hen survival and things like that. But the other side of the equation is really that wetland base. And Ramsey, when we pulled this data together for the duck symposium, we didn’t have as nice a contemporary information on that. I know we have new data that’s coming for Canada that should be ready this year, that we’ll look at trends in wetlands since 2011 to about 2020, I think that report should come out and we’ll inform it. But what I can tell you is occurring is continued wetland drainage across the Canadian prairies. Especially across Saskatchewan, we see continued ditching and drainage, moving water out of wetlands and off the landscape once again to yield more cropland because of that demand for those commodities. So, that’s the trend that we saw on the Canadian side. Johan, a little more data on the US side, and we just got a report like this week from the Fish & Wildlife Service on kind of wetlands across all of the US. So you can talk about wetland losses in the US side, Johan.

Johannes Walker: Yeah, and wetland losses on the US side have slowed, fortunately, considerably post about 1986, when farm bill disincentive policies were put in place to reduce wetland drainage. At that time, about 100,000 acres of wetlands a year were being drained in the country, and that dropped to about 10,000 acres a year after that in subsequent decades, wetland loss has been reduced. But any wetland loss is really impactful. Because what we haven’t talked about in terms of populations is that breeding prairie ducks are territorial. So I say this everywhere I go, and you can repeat it, but 10 one acre wetlands, according to data that we’ve collected in this profession over the last 50 years, hold 3 times more breeding pairs than one 10 acre wetland. So it’s the small wetlands that matter, and they have to be out there, and those are still being drained, it’s harder to keep a handle on them. And I haven’t studied that report because it came out on Friday to a level that I’m confident making sweeping statements about it. But a few things caught my eye. Wetland loss in the US is ongoing. It’s still focused on vegetated wetlands. Prairie pothole wetlands are a population of vegetated wetlands and that kind of terminology. The secretary of the interior and the preamble said, hey, we’re not making it on no net loss of wetlands in the US, and we need to reconsider our strategy. So this is being noticed at the highest levels in the Department of Interior, it’s being noticed across landscapes all the way throughout the center of the country, from New Orleans all the way up to Bismarck, North Dakota. And I’m hopeful that that’ll get some focus back on it. So, wetland loss is slower than grassland loss in the US, but it’s still going on. And every time we do that, that’s one more place a pair can’t show up during the breeding season and be successful.

Ramsey Russell: I’m powerless. Anybody listening, we are powerless against global agricultural commodity prices. We can’t affect that market. We sure can’t make it rain. Ask any southern duck hunter this past year. Boy, if we could have made it rain, we’d have made it rain. But how bad is this drought, then? Cause you’re talking about wetlands loss. And I just think when I’m up in Canada and up in the prairie right now, during these dry periods, I see the dirt pans rolling. It’s got to be, even though wetlands loss may have slowed, Johan, this is the time during these drought periods. This is when we’re starting to lose a lot of those 10 one acre wetlands. Am I right?

Defining the Loss of Wetlands

We’re talking about wetlands that have a ditch put in and they will never hold water again if that ditch isn’t sort of plugged or that kind of thing.

Scott Stephens: Yeah. And we should clarify, Ramsey, the way you phrased that made me think that we should be pretty specific here. So when we say wetland loss, we’re not talking about wetlands that have just dried out, due drought. We’re talking about wetlands that have a ditch put in and they will never hold water again if that ditch isn’t sort of plugged or that kind of thing. Johan and I may be sloppy in our terminology, but when we say wetland loss, we’re talking about sort of permanent loss caused by change in the hydrology of the wetland usually impacted in the prairies. The biggest impact is from agriculture, and not just that pond went dry, when it rains again, it will fill back up. So it’s probably just important to clarify that.

Ramsey Russell: How many wetlands have we lost since, say, 2011? Do you have that data?

Scott Stephens: In Canada, we will get that data this year, that they’re just rolling up that summary from 2011, I think, until about 2020. So 2011 was the last timeframe that we had for that information, and we were losing. Oh, it was not insignificant.  wetland lost continued to happen out there on the landscape. I could show you pictures of whole sections of land in one year that you can see all the pothole wetlands, and the next year, you can see all the ditches, the ditch network, connecting those and moving it off the landscape. One of the most challenging areas would be east central Saskatchewan, where a bunch of that drainage is happening. And unfortunately, the jurisdiction for wetlands in Canada is at the provincial scale. So it’s not like there’s a federal rule on wetlands each province decides. We have made some progress in getting some wetland policy that protects wetlands in Alberta and more recently in Manitoba, that has slowed those losses. But in Saskatchewan, the jurisdiction with more wetlands than any other up here in the Canadian prairies, we do not have those kind of protected measures in place.

Ramsey Russell: What about on the US side?

Johannes Walker: So the most recent data that focuses strictly on wetland loss in the US prairie pothole region, that time series ended in about 2014, and to my knowledge, that study hasn’t been revisited. So I’m speaking from that data, but my recollection is that wetland loss from that data was about 6200 acres a year. But to put that in terms like we’ve been talking about, that could be around 5000 little basins.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Johannes Walker: And like we talked about that could be quite a few pairs that have to go somewhere else now. So it’s not trivial, it’s not, thousands of basins.

Scott Stephens: Right.

Johannes Walker: Every few months, right, it’s slowed down, but it’s still, we’re just chipping away at it, right? We’re just shifting the base.

Ramsey Russell: Well, this drought, we’re in right now, this continental drought we’re in right now has been going on for a period of years, it didn’t just start. It’s been going on for several years and even with the lack of snow cover, even with the lack of rainfall, even with the warm winters, yada, yada, go look at the, go look at the Mississippi river flood river gauges in the spring. Where the heck is all that water coming from? When Vicksburg almost hits flood stage and we’re in a drought? Where the heck is all that water coming from, if we’re not draining wetland?

Consequences of Draining Wetlands 

I would use is when we drain those wetlands, there’s also some language, they’re called isolated wetlands. This gets into details around supreme court decisions, but they’re classified as isolated wetlands. Well, when you put a ditch in and connect it to the creek that connects it to the river, they’re no longer isolated.

Scott Stephens: Yeah, well, that’s exactly right, Ramsey. The simple analogy that I would use is when we drain those wetlands, there’s also some language, they’re called isolated wetlands. This gets into details around supreme court decisions, but they’re classified as isolated wetlands. Well, when you put a ditch in and connect it to the creek that connects it to the river, they’re no longer isolated. Like the water that would have stayed in that wetland now flows off the landscape and into the river. So my simple shorthand would be what we’re doing when we drain wetlands is we’re plumbing watersheds, right? So then when we get rain, it’s like you flush the toilet and it all comes off like that. So, not only are there duck implications, but there are implications for sort of this, the sustainability of watersheds from a community standpoint that folks need to think about. The scenarios for changing climate suggest that those rain events that we get are going to be more extreme. We’re already seeing that that’s expected to continue. So those landscapes are less resilient is what the watershed ecologists would tell you, and less able to handle those more extreme events. So there are bigger implications of that than just ducks. Obviously, all of us care about ducks, but I think this may be ties to something that you mentioned. It’s like, hey, we can’t impact big agriculture and these things. But we’ve definitely started to talk about these other factors that are at play. And I know that what Johan and I try and do, we try to build a bigger tent of folks who should care about keeping wetlands. And that can be communities along the Mississippi river because they don’t, like, get flooded all the time, it can be people who like clean water. It can be a whole host of folks. But you’re right, Ramsey. We will probably need more than just duck folks to care about this stuff to change the trends. But for sure, what I can guarantee, I want to say this before I forget it, we need all of the duck folks pulling on the rope here to say, okay, you all need to advocate for policies that are beneficial to habitat all across the continent, but for sure in the prairie pothole region. Because if we depend on just the people that live in the prairie pothole region, we will lose this battle. We need folks from all across the country advocating for this stuff. So I know you were worried because there was kind of, some signs of infighting. We definitely need, we’ll need the whole of folks who care about ducks pulling on the rope in the same direction to sort of change some of these trends. So I wanted to get that in before I forgot it.

Ramsey Russell: Well, I’m glad you did because I think as I’m sitting in a duck blind in south Delta, Mississippi, waiting on ducks that, at 54 ° in Edmonton, Alberta, that aren’t showing up, I lose sight of the fact that this is a continental resource and that, that I’m in the same life raft as the guys in South Dakota and Alberta and Manitoba and California we’re all in this thing together. You know what I’m saying? And I mean, to your point, Scott, during we’re in a drought and we’re going to talk about that before we wrap up just how bad this drought is. But back during the dust bowl days, it was so bad that way back when 80 some odd years ago, they pulled together, they all pulled on the same rope and come out of that Ducks Unlimited, you know what I’m saying? They said we’ve got to do something at a continental level to preserve our wetlands. We talk about the benefits of, talk about the benefits, here we are in a political climate with politicians up in Washington telling me I need to drive a battery operated car and I need to convert the landscape to wind farms and solar panels. Well, wait a minute. If we’re worried about atmospheric carbon, let’s put more grasslands and more wetlands on the landscape because those are huge carbon sinks, and I get more ducks out of the deal. Why aren’t we looking at this for a solution? I mean, that would benefit me as a duck hunter, but it would benefit all of society and less atmospheric carbon in North America.

Scott Stephens: Yeah, and I think those are the kinds of solutions that we’re always trying to come up with. Okay, what’s the angle that beneficial to ducks but deliver some of these other benefits? Like, I know Johan and his team are constantly thinking about that. You guys have big grants from the USDA that are focused on some of those things, Johan.

What is Duck Stamp Revenue Used For?

Year to year hunting regulations come and go, restrictive seasons will come, liberal seasons will come back. But habitat matters all the time.

Johannes Walker: Yeah, that’s exactly what I was going to bring up, Scott. I mean, I think you made a really excellent point. There is a tradition of duck hunters and these constituencies that we belong to leading the way on this stuff in these times of crisis. You’re absolutely right, Ramsey. The next thing that happened down the road from a big drought was the North American Waterfowl Management plan in 1986. Once again, the community of concerned, especially duck hunters, came together and said, we got to do something. I feel like that kind of moment might be building now. And to get back to the point, we are building programs, conservation programs in the prairies, especially in the US, around funding that is, for climate mitigation and for clean water and for flood control that are new and additive to our existing programs, that are more focused on working with the Fish & Wildlife service to use duck stamp revenue. Everything counts. But there’s an opportunity now to kind of bring the community together and say, this is a serious situation. Drought is always kind of galvanized for us, but what we really need to think about is the long term future of habitat. Just like the people who came before us thought about that on our behalf, and we were lucky enough to inherit a landscape that gave us the seasons we’ve enjoyed for the last couple of decades. Now, it’s our turn to look ahead. So sort of one thing I want to make sure I say before I forget is that for your listeners, I’d worry less about year to year regulations, we’ll keep hang in there, you’ll get yours and you have to take, as my parents used to tell me, you got to take the bad with the good, but long range, I’m hoping for water to come back in the next few years so I can enjoy some more abundant populations. But what I’m not hoping about is I’m working, and our teams are working day and night to keep that habitat on the ground, not just for us when it gets wet again, but for the future so that folks can keep working on this. That’s the important stuff. Year to year hunting regulations come and go, restrictive seasons will come, liberal seasons will come back. But habitat matters all the time.

Ramsey Russell: Habitat matters all the time. And that’s why I wanted to get you all on here. I mean, we’ve gone in you all’s discussion, we’ve gone from 50 million ducks to fewer than 30 million, we’re in a drought. And I just feel like, I mean, I’ve got a 27 year old son, he’s known nothing but a 60 day, 6 duck limit his entire lifetime. And I see this whopping meteors coming right towards the duck hunting world called a drought kaboom. And I hear folks say, oh, I’d like some of these duck hunters to quit. No, I don’t want any duck hunters to quit because so much habitat is on private land. So many of these CRP acres is on private land. So much of the wintering habitat is on private land. I want everybody involved here. How bad is the drought? How bad is this drought right now as compared to last year, the year before 4 years ago? What are we looking at right now? When I look at the maps of just how dry the prairies are right now, it’s scary. It’s like drier than has maybe been in my son’s lifetime.

Scott Stephens: Yeah, maybe. I’ll start, Ramsey. This is a topic that’s on people’s minds. And a couple weeks ago, Johan and I were at a DU, all conservation staff meeting in Dallas, and we had a brief conversation with Adam Putnam, our CEO, kind of saying, hey, what are things looking like up there? And I think the story that we tried to tell is maybe this is the way I’d boil it down. So, I graduated high school in 1988, so I wasn’t working in this field, when the drought of the 80s hit. But the way things are shaping up, I think it will be the driest conditions across the prairie pothole region writ large that I’ve seen during my 28 years of working in this field. So, as we’ve talked about, that’s scary, Ramsey. But I think what’s scarier is making sure we keep the habitat base because we know, droughts like this come periodically and you got to sort of wait them out. But if you have that habitat base there, then when you get to the other side ducks come back. So, Johan, you can weigh in on your perspective, too.

Johannes Walker: Thanks, man. I feel like everything you said makes a lot of sense. Scott, as I look at this, that’s kind of true for my career as a professional waterfowl biologist, and certainly my career as a duck hunter goes back before that. And this drought that we’re in now is as widespread as and as intense as the drought that kind of came along around 2001 through 2005. I mean, I’m staring at the pond counts now, we aren’t quite down to that 1980s level yet, but if it keeps going, if this drought lasts a few more years, it’s quite likely we’ll get there. And so this is a serious drought. This is the most serious drought someone younger who’s known nothing but liberal seasons and wet prairies will have ever seen. It’s a call to action. The thing that’s behind it, this habitat loss we’ve been talking about, this gives us a chance. Imagine if this drought was permanent.

What Can Hunters Do to Hang on to Waterfowl Habitat?

But the collective impact of small actions means that today the Fish & Wildlife Service and their partners have protected 30% of the carrying capacity for pairs in those prairie states, South Dakota, North Dakota and Montana.

Scott Stephens: Right.

Johannes Walker: Right. Do that thought experiment, because that’s what it’s like if all the wetlands are drained and the grass is gone, it’s like the drought will never go away.

Scott Stephens: Right.

Johannes Walker: The key to recovering from the drought is to hang on to the habitat.

Ramsey Russell: And what can we, the listeners, do to hang on to the habitat, Johan? Scott?

Johannes Walker: I’ve got a few ideas, and then I’ll let Scott jump in and take the floor for a minute. But what I talk about at Ducks Unlimited a lot of times in response to that question is 3 things, philanthropy, advocacy and leadership and I’ll clarify those things. It’s really important. Pick a conservation organization that works for you and give some of your time or some of your money to that organization to help drive things that you can’t drive yourself. You’re right. It feels overwhelming, Ramsey. But the collective impact of small actions means that today the Fish & Wildlife Service and their partners have protected 30% of the carrying capacity for pairs in those prairie states, South Dakota, North Dakota and Montana. That’s a pretty impressive accomplishment that added up over time. That wouldn’t have happened without those private sector philanthropic donations to match federal grants to bring resources and attention to the prairies. That’s a big deal. A lot of times, the private sector leads the public sector in our country. You can think of examples of that. Advocacy matters, and by that, I mean every one of us, every duck hunter can respond to calls to action to fund the North American Wetlands Conservation Act, to fund other conservation programs like CRP. We can raise our voices, we can call our senators, we can call our representatives. But when those emails come in, if it’s something you’re really thinking about and concerned about, take a moment, try to respond and tell people about it. Finally, leadership. The idea that when we get together, there’s more power in our gathering together and joining forces. Bring your friends, educate your family about these things. Some of the things that we were talking about earlier that Scott was talking about, carbon, clean water and flood control, there are values that wetlands bring that affect all of us. And so we should take every chance we get to connect the dots and bring more people into this enterprise.

Scott Stephens: Those are good, Mike. And I would just reiterate the one about the simple thing that you can do is educate your buddies around you and the folks that you interact with. And like I said, Ramsay, I spent time setting in, gumbo mud in Delta, Mississippi, too. And the prairie pothole region is a long ways away from there, right? And seems like it’s not connected, but it absolutely is. So we will need everybody who cares about ducks to understand those connections and why they need to care and why Ag policy 1500 miles away, matters to them. State agencies support habitat conservation work, sending money to Canada on the breeding grounds. And I know at times we have to educate those groups about, a new commissioner will come on and say, why the hell are we sending money to Canada? And it’s like, okay, if more people understand that connection, it will be easier to send those dollars, advocate, make progress on the habitat base that matters to all of us. And I like your boat analogy. As times get tough, it’s like sometimes you get folks who are like, hey, there’s a hole in your side of the boat, right? But it’s like we’re all in that same boat. So, bickering about, you guys shot too much, or like, that’s noise, in my opinion. It’s like, how are we going to protect the habitat base so that when we get the water back, which will come back, that there will be ducks like there have been in the past?

Ramsey Russell: Thank you all very much. Scott Stephens, Johannes Walker, Ducks Unlimited. I appreciate you all coming on and explaining this habitat thing, talking about the duck factory. Just how subject to it all we are, you know what I’m saying? I mean, it’s just we’re powerless in a way, but we’re not. To me, it is a call of action. When I look at this younger generation, when I think of the best 20 some odd years of duck hunting I’ve just got done enjoying, it’s going to get worse before it gets better. And I don’t know duck hunters to be quitters. When the going gets tough, the tough get going and that’s what we’ve got to do. We’ve got to join together. We’ve got to work collectively. We’ve got to work to conserve habitat from here on the Gulf coast region all the way up into Prairie Canada. And I appreciate you all sharing some numbers. I really do. Kind of shedding some light on this murky situation.

Scott Stephens: Yeah, absolutely. We are happy to do it. I mean, this is the kind of stuff that we talk about and think about every day. I feel lucky because on a daily basis I get to think about and try and put into action how can we make things better for ducks? And there are a bunch of people that do that, right? There are a bunch of people in conservation organizations that do their part of that every day. There are a bunch of people in state and federal agencies that do that every day. Most of the folks who are in this field really care about the resource, so it’s good to share that. But I would tell folks, keep that in mind, too. Most of the folks in this area are on your side, right? They want the same things you want.

Ramsey Russell: Thank you all. And folks, thank you all for listening to this episode of Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast. See you next time.