State ducks decline again despite continental trend

[JohnWester]

As the duck population increased in the midcontinent area, it went down for the third year in a row in Minnesota.

For Minnesota's 100,000 or so duck hunters, the news is perplexing:

Spring breeding duck numbers declined again in the state for the third consecutive year, while the overall midcontinent duck population increased, according to separate state and federal duck surveys released last week.

Officials can't explain those contradicting trends except to say it underscores the loss of quality waterfowl nesting habitat in Minnesota and the need to add and improve upon it.

But despite the local concerns, state and federal officials and conservation group leaders were optimistic that this fall's hunting season could be a decent one ? if those ducks have a successful nesting season.

And the positive federal survey means it is likely hunters will again be offered a 60-day season.

Here's the good news:

The breeding duck population in the midcontinent area of the U.S. and Canada climbed to 41 million birds ? up 14 percent from last year and 24 percent above the 50-year long-term average.

Mallard numbers rose 10 percent to just over 8 million, 7 percent above their long-term average, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service survey. Redheads, canvasbacks and northern shovelers are at record highs and other species increased, too.

And habitat conditions in prairie Canada and the Dakotas ? where the vast majority of the continent's ducks are produced ? improved, which bodes well for production.

Meanwhile, a state Department of Natural Resources spring waterfowl survey showed Minnesota's mallard population jumped 51 percent from last year to 242,000. That's 9 percent above the long-term 40-year average but 23 percent below the average over the past 10 years.

And the condition of wetlands here improved from last year, meaning they should have been more attractive to ducks.

But they weren't.

Here's the bad news:

The state's total breeding duck population fell, for the third consecutive year, to a 24-year low of 489,000 ducks. Not since 1983 have so few ducks been counted during the state survey. A three-year decline happened only once before since the survey began in 1968.

While mallard numbers were up, blue-winged teal and other duck species dropped significantly. The number of blue-winged teal ? 124,000 ? was down 29 percent from last year and 46 percent from the long-term average. That's a distinct difference from the midcontinent survey, which showed blue-winged teal up 14 percent to near-record numbers.

And "other" ducks in the state survey ? including wood ducks, redheads and ring-necked ducks ? fell 38 percent from last year to 115,000. That's down a whopping 51 percent from the 10-year average of 236,000.

State officials say they can't explain why state duck numbers are falling while they are increasing in the larger midcontinent survey, but they are troubled by the trend.

"We continue to be very concerned about the status of waterfowl here in the state," said Dave Schad, DNR Fish and Wildlife Division director.

But the conflicting trend doesn't surprise Ryan Heiniger, conservation director for Ducks Unlimited.

"Minnesota has lost the smaller seasonal and temporary wetlands," Heiniger said. "The larger wetlands that exist here just don't attract breeding waterfowl like the smaller ones do. We just don't have the right landscape ingredients to attract breeding waterfowl."

Concerned about the plight of ducks in Minnesota, the DNR launched a duck restoration plan five years ago and finalized a long-range plan last year. The goal is to boost the breeding population to 1 million ducks by restoring 2 million acres of habitat. But the plan, criticized by some, has a time horizon of 50 years.

The DNR has added more than 22,000 acres of habitat to its wildlife management area system over the past five years, said Steve Cordts, DNR waterfowl specialist. And another 10,000 to 20,000 acres of grasslands have been planted yearly.

So, do the recently declining state duck numbers mean the DNR's duck plan is a failure?

"No, you just aren't going to see a change overnight," Cordts said. "The amount of habitat we restore in a given year, there'd be no way to measure that in terms of an annual change in duck numbers. Adding a few thousand acres of habitat is not going to be a quick fix that people would like to see.

"Why our numbers have gone down the past few years, I don't know."

Schad and Cordts said caution should be used when trying to interpret one or two years of survey results. Both the federal and state surveys are an index to look at trends. Timing of the spring migration ? which can vary depending on weather and water conditions ? can affect survey numbers, for example.

Still, the three-year decline of total breeding ducks in the state is confusing. Said Schad: "It could be an indication that our habitat either isn't there or is in such poor quality that we're not attracting or holding migrating ducks. It could be because of good nesting conditions to the west and north of us. It's really challenging to interpret what's going on."

It's also difficult to determine how the state survey results will be reflected come hunting season. Locally produced ducks often make up a large part of the bagged birds in early season, but overall about two-thirds of the mallards killed by Minnesota hunters are migrants.