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Delta Scientific Director Discusses Plan to ‘Shortstop’ Migratory Waterfowl from Oil-Fouled Wetlands

If the federal duck survey suggests that canvasback numbers are way down, then we can respond by reducing hunting limits.

Delta Waterfowl

Gulf Coast --(Ammoland.com)- BP’s Macondo well is capped—at least for now—and that’s welcome relief to Gulf Coast residents who are grappling with the economic, environmental and emotional fallout from the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

But serious questions remain for the millions of migratory birds that will begin descending on or through the Gulf Coast beginning this month.

“The fact is, when blue-winged teal start to show up here in August, no one knows what they’re going to find,” said Delta Waterfowl Scientific Director Dr. Frank Rohwer, who is also a professor at Louisiana State University’s School of Renewable Natural Resources.

“We’re in unchartered territory.”

Over the last several weeks, two complimentary plans have emerged to “shortstop” ducks, geese and other migratory birds from oil-contaminated portions of the Gulf Coast.

In what has been characterized as an unprecedented attempt to alter migration routes, the federal government is spending more than $20 million on “alternative habitat” in eight states to attract southward-bound birds. The Natural Resources Conservation Service—an arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture—will establish as much as 150,000 acres in states as far north as Missouri.

In addition, Ducks Unlimited recently received a $2.5 million grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. The funds are being used to “flood alternative habitats” in the rice regions of coastal Louisiana and Texas.

In the following Q&A, Dr. Rohwer weighs in on the short-stopping question, whether “hazing” birds from oil-contaminated areas is worth a try, and why he believes a season closure is a bad idea.

The federal government and others are attempting to “shortstop” ducks during the migration to keep them out of the oil in coastal Louisiana. Can this well-intentioned multi-million dollar idea work on a meaningful scale? Can such an effort impact duck distribution?

I’m quite skeptical that such a program will work to keep ducks out of coastal areas in Louisiana, where all of us are concerned about birds being exposed to oil.

Remember last year during the winter we had extraordinarily wet conditions throughout Arkansas, Mississippi, southern Missouri and northern Louisiana. Those conditions provided thousands of acres of freshly flooded habitat. Even with those extraordinary habitat conditions ducks were still using Louisiana’s coastal marshes in numbers comparable to the five-year average. So I’m doubtful that the proposed efforts can have a big impact on duck distribution.

Finally, I wonder if anyone thought much about duck hunters before they initiated this plan. Suppose I’m wrong and we can shortstop ducks. It would be ironic that in a year when Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama coastal hunters will likely struggle to find places to hunt, we would make the hunting situation worse for them. For the guys north of the oil frontline — that is, the majority of Louisiana hunters — it will be especially frustrating if shortstopping works because they will see fewer ducks in their decoys this fall.

Are some ducks species faithful to the same wintering areas year after year and generation after generation?

It is the rule that migratory birds go to traditional areas to spend the winter. That also applies to most ducks. There are a few ducks, especially mallards, that stay as far north as they can until freezing weather and a lack of food push them to migrate south. That, however, is more the exception rather than the rule. We often have ducks showing up in Louisiana in August and September, long before northern weather would move birds.

In the past 25 years we have learned that some of the bay and sea ducks show remarkable homing to the exact same sites to spend the winter. That may also occur with dabbling ducks, but researchers just have not examined how precisely individual ducks return to wintering sites.

Scaup, canvasbacks and other diving ducks winter in the Gulf’s coastal bays where the current risk of oiling is most serious. Can we shortstop divers?

This is very unlikely. From what I’ve read, the incentives programs are all about flooding grain fields, especially rice and other shallow wetland habitat. That will have no impact on those three species of divers, which are probably the most at-risk species because they predominantly use those outer coastal bays where the near-shore oil has been a real problem.

Are there any other approaches that can be put in play to minimize birds coming in contact with oiled areas

Yes, the USDA and others have a long history of using disturbance techniques (often called hazing) on certain bird species to alter bird distribution.

The compelling thing about hazing is that the technique would be very focused, because we would haze birds only where there’s a problem with oil contamination. Hazing also has a record of working — we know we can disturb ducks and move them out of an area. Hazing isn’t as easy as it may sound, but it sure can work.

Hazing operations can also mobilize fairly quickly. Remember, Louisiana has a lot of out-of-work watermen, thanks to the Horizon incident, and we could use them to target sites that continue to have oil and settling ducks.

Hazing should be a priority moving forward. Its focus would be narrow because we’d only be targeting at-risk ducks in the most impacted areas

Some have discussed closing the duck season over fears of a major duck die-off in the Gulf. What’s your reaction to that idea?

Nonsense. I like the idea that hunters were the first to offer up this idea, because they really care about the long-term welfare of the resource. However, I strongly dislike this idea for three very different reasons.

First, some philosophy. It would gall me that hunters have to sacrifice because of BP’s mistakes.

Second, some biology. This idea of closing seasons or reducing limits is squarely resting on the idea that our modest harvest levels have a long-term impact on the size of duck populations. That is a very questionable. In North America we build so much safety into our hunting regulations that we stand little chance of seeing any population-level impact to even a relatively large oil kill.

Finally, some practicality. Closing or reducing seasons presupposes substantial mortality due to oil. I seriously doubt there will be much oil-related duck mortality. If I’m wrong and the Horizon oil spill does kill lots of ducks, the time to alter seasons or limits would be next year. For example, if the 2011 federal duck survey suggests that canvasback numbers are way down, then we might respond by reducing limits or having a species closure. Let’s not presuppose a problem that may never materialize.

About:
Delta Waterfowl provides knowledge, leaders and science-based solutions that efficiently conserve waterfowl and secure the future for waterfowl hunting. Visit: www.deltawaterfowl.org

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U.S. Continues to Attract Majority of Nesting Ducks in Prairie Pothole Region
Breeding Population Survey Released

Blue-winged Teal are down 14% from 2009

Deltawaterfowl.org

Bismarck, ND CA --(AmmoLand.com)- The 56th edition of the Waterfowl Breeding Population and Habitat Survey, released today by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Canadian Wildlife Service, revealed wetland conditions and duck populations well above their long-term averages.

The headline numbers: The total-duck population across the traditional survey dropped slightly to 40.9 million from last year’s 42 million, mallard numbers were steady at 8.4 million, scaup numbers rose slightly to 4.2 million and the northern pintail population bumped up 9 percent to 3.5 million.

More good news: Most of the breeding grounds are today even wetter–in some cases much wetter–than when the surveys were flown in May, which will promote re-nesting and increase brood survival.

As was the case in 2009, the real news is buried in the fine print, which showed a continuing shift in breeding-duck numbers from Canada to the U.S.

Part of the reason was an all-time record 2.9 million wetlands on the U.S. side of the region, with 2.3 million of those in the eastern Dakotas. Wetlands are what attract nesting ducks. and the U.S. has never been wetter.

Prairie Canada was wetter than normal, led by a 21 percent year-over-year increase in the pond count in southern Saskatchewan. Yet despite being 34 percent wetter than its long-term average, 72 percent fewer pintails and 18 percent fewer mallards settled in Saskatchewan than its historical average.

Once again, the U.S. picked up the slack. More total ducks settled on the U.S. side of the breeding grounds–13.9 million in the Dakotas and eastern Montana as compared to 10.6 million in the prairie portions of Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba.

That’s pretty remarkable when you consider that two-thirds of the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) exists on the Canadian side of the border,” says Delta Scientific Director Dr. Frank Rohwer of Louisiana State University.

“Delta has been saying for years that Canada is broken, and the latest survey numbers once again bear that out.”

The U.S. side of the region attracted 1.4 million pintails compared to just 592,000 in prairie Canada. Last year was the first time ever that more pintails settled in the U.S. than in prairie Canada.

Other stunners included 4.2 million blue-winged teal in the U.S. to 1.9 million in prairie Canada and 3 million mallards in the U.S. to 2.6 million in the prairie provinces.

Under normal conditions, those results would be cause for celebration, but the good news from the U.S. was offset by concerns about ongoing losses of the habitat that attracted those ducks in the first place.

“We heard from a lot of duck hunters who told us the recent season didn’t live up to their expectations after the great wetland conditions last spring,” says Delta Senior Vice President John Devney. “The best explanation is the ducks that settled in the Dakotas and Montana a year ago weren’t as productive as they were in the 1990s because there was a lot less nesting cover than there was in the ‘90s.

“The Dakotas have lost close to 2 million acres of grass since 1999–that’s more than 3,100 square miles–and another 2 million acres of CRP are scheduled to expire by 2012.

“Research conducted by the Service showed that upland-nesting ducks need large blocks of grass to produce at population-expanding levels, but we’re losing Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) and native prairie acres at an alarming rate. Not only are we losing grass, but also the high-quality wetlands embedded in those acres.

The take-home message is that the U.S. side of the region carried Canada during the wet cycle of the 1990s, but if the U.S. keeps losing habitat, who’s going to pick up the slack?”

Rohwer, who is currently involved in research projects in northeastern North Dakota, says nest success in low-grass areas this spring has been extremely poor–less than 5 percent, which is well below what’s necessary for the population to expand. “If we keep losing grass, that doesn’t bode well for duck numbers,” he says.

Waterfowl hunters across the continent have expressed concern about what impact the BP oil spill will have on the estimated 5 million ducks that will begin arriving in the Gulf of Mexico less than two months from now.

“The oil spill is an environmental disaster that could affect ducks and duck hunters for years to come,” says Rohwer. “We have no experience with this kind of disaster, so it’s impossible to predict what will happen.

“It would appear that diving ducks like scaup, canvasbacks and redheads will be most at risk because they sit in the coastal bays where there has been a lot of oil in recent weeks.”

Rohwer says it’s possible large numbers of dabblers could also be affected by oil, but calls that a worst-case scenario and only should occur if a tropical storm pushes oil into the freshwater portions of the marsh where dabbling ducks are typically found.

There’s no way to know if ducks will move around to avoid the oil,” Rohwer says. “Ducks have no experience with oil, so they may have little predisposition to avoid it.

The bottom line is while we need to find ways to mitigate the damage caused by the Deepwater spill and ensure the long-term viability of coastal wetlands, we can’t ignore the challenges ducks face on the breeding grounds.

Loss of CRP and native grass in the Dakotas, and the loss of wetlands and low productivity in Canada, are suppressing our fall flights. We need to keep the focus on the breeding grounds.”

About:
Delta Waterfowl provides knowledge, leaders and science-based solutions that efficiently conserve waterfowl and secure the future for waterfowl hunting. Visit: www.deltawaterfowl.org

Filed under: Conservation News, Hunting News by Ammoland No Comments »