Verdant grasses sway to the tempo of a light breeze on a landscape that slopes gently down to a pond below that is ringed with bulrush. Clumps of wildflowers show off their blooms among the waving green field, the oranges and blues seeming to amplify the first brilliant rays of morning sun as a chorus responds to the conductor. No shred of a cloud mars the blue of the dawn sky.

It’s a place I visit often in springtime dawns – a place I have come to call “Anecdotal Evidence Hill,” because when we have good numbers of breeding pairs, nesting mallards abound on that hillside. From mid-April on, the pond usually shows several broods paddling resolutely after their mothers, with other ducks plentiful along the margins. When populations decline, that spot seems to hold very few, if any, ducks despite the owner’s diligent slaughter of predator species, a practice he pursues without regard to the impediment of a few inconvenient laws.

In the spring of ’99, that slope and pond were as crowded as a waterfowl version of a Calcutta railroad station. Last year, the opposite was true. I expected the prime nesting condition of this warm, wet springtime to jumpstart a renaissance. The view from Anecdotal Evidence Hill provides limited cause to support that thesis – guarded optimism, well short of unbridled jubilation.

True enough, other grounds hold good numbers of nesters and the newly flooded rice fields hold more broods than we have seen in years. But we seem to lack the high numbers that we came to expect during the late ‘90s, particularly during the spring of ’99. Our fall skies will reflect that lack – after we take our toll of this spring’s juvenile crop – no matter what the hucksters might say to the contrary.

Since May of 1999, Anecdotal Evidence Hill possesses the qualities of an ancient oracle for me, without the inconvenience of a high priest, acolytes, incense or the mess of blood sacrifice. Careful observation of that scene on a May dawn provides the observer with a clear prediction of the mallard flight for the upcoming fall, five months later. The oracle has been dead-bang accurate for six straight years. That thought doesn’t fill me with great joy – as this year’s picture seems only a modest improvement over last year’s, and last year’s was ugly, by any measure.

Then, on a whim, I went looking for my dog-eared copy of the Central Valley Habitat Joint Venture Implementation Plan adopted, as I recall, in 1990.¹ I couldn’t find it so this is written from memory, for a purpose that will become clear to any of you with the patience to stay with me.

Concerned over loss of wintering ground, U.S. and Canadian biologists met to consult pursuant to the North American Migratory Bird Treaty. In their deliberations, they identified the California Central Valley as the second most important wintering habitat in the Lower 48, under serious threat due to conversion of wetlands to agriculture and other uses.

The Joint Venture was formed in response to that cry of alarm. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Cal Fish & Game, DU, CWA, TPL and others were parties The Joint Venture formed a task force, divided the Valley into a series of sub-regions, inventoried the wintering ground in each sub-region, and set a target for increasing and committing the wintering acreage to accommodate a level of hypothetical population. It adopted strategies for (a) preventing further loss of wintering habitat, and (b) expanding the wintering grounds in each sub-region to meet or exceed the targets.²

The Plan remains, in my opinion, a marvelous and enlightened management document, with clear goals rationally stated, supported with copious data, a precise purpose and specific strategies tailored to the goals.³ It was adopted during a prolonged drought and had an air of emergency prompted by the alarming climatic conditions. The Plan set the year 2000 as the date for fulfillment of its objectives.

I don’t know if the efforts of the Joint Venture succeeded in meeting, exceeding or falling short of the Plan’s stated goals in each sub-region in numeric terms, although I am aware of major strides in all of them. But I am absolutely sure of one thing.

By the year 2000 (probably the last good hunting and flight year we have experienced here and elsewhere), we had more wintering habitat in the Central Valley than birds to use it by a wide margin, a condition that has become increasingly obvious with each passing season. Thus, whether we hit the numbers exactly or not, the Plan succeeded – perhaps too well in the eyes of many, (such as those who want to “improve” our hunting by opening up the sanctuaries in part created by the Plan).

Why recount this history? If it is possible to inventory wintering ground, estimate the number of birds the ground can nurture and set targets for acquiring additional land to support more birds on a region-by-region basis, why can’t we do that for production ground as well? Clearly we can. Clearly, we can estimate the potential production for each acre of breeding ground and strategies for enhancing it. We can identify lands that could be converted to production ground and adopt strategies for implementing that conversion. We can do all this with specific breeding population targets as the goal.

The California Waterfowl Association’s Mallard Legacy Program takes precisely this sort of approach. Seeking to stabilize local breeding mallard counts within a 350,000⁴ to 500,000 bird range, it calculates the additional acreage in breeding ground required to achieve that goal. It then identifies strategies for securing the additional ground, as well as for enhancing the brood production capabilities of lands already available through more production-sensitive management practices.⁵ A new Implementation Plan for the Central Valley Habitat Joint Venture is already in draft form, concentrating heavily on production habitat needs and specific strategies for meeting those needs. Still in its infancy, the Mallard Legacy Program has attracted substantial contributions of cash and commitments from interested landowners – still well short of the target acreage, but well on the way.

The California situation is not typical of other major waterfowling states. We produce close to half of the birds we kill here every season – mallards, wood ducks, cinnamon teal, gadwall and a smattering of other species. Only the Dakotas and, perhaps, Minnesota have a comparable setting and self-interested local opportunity. But a number of folks spend their days giving the mid-continent production issue intense study and concern, as the most recent issue of Delta Waterfowl attests. The service has apparently compiled much of the relevant data for the mid-continent, including estimates of the production potential of available acreage under optimum, moderate and dry conditions.

As in all aspects of waterfowl biology, the data has its rough edges and unproved assumptions. For example, how many nests can a prairie acre accommodate? How does that number fluctuate, depending upon soil moisture content and vegetation? How does the presence of a wet pothole influence that number? How many ducklings can we assume that the total of the nests on a particular plot will produce? Many more questions must be asked and answered to reach the question that really matters: how many breeding pairs does it take to sustain a target production level under various climatic conditions? How do we set that target and how do the managers plan for that number of breeding pairs when the kill regulations are set in the fall in contemplation of unknown nesting conditions the following spring? The CWA Mallard Legacy Program has attempted to address those questions and may serve as a template for others, at least in part, at least as a starting point.

A few fundamentals should inform the approach to these questions, regardless of locale: First, when deaths exceed births in any population, that population declines – just as it increases when the opposite obtains. Dead ducks lay no eggs. No hen can fight her way out of a freezer bag to bring off a brood. Habitat without breeders is as barren as breeders without habitat. The birds we kill or elect not to kill represent the only part of the equation under our direct control. A duck we shoot produces no offspring. A duck we refrain from shooting may make several trips back to the nesting grounds, find a suitable nest site and bring off a brood or two.

It is said that management for next spring’s production wastes hunter opportunity because the birds that survive to return to the nesting ground in a drought year produce little or nothing. In a bountiful year, we have birds in excess of critical mass, i.e., a surplus. We might as well have shot those birds. But it is equally true that those shot birds represent a lost opportunity for the future when we have a wet spring on the nesting grounds with less than the optimal number of breeders to take advantage of the conditions, as in California this fine spring.⁶

My challenge is this: Pick a breeding population critical mass and adopt management strategies calculated to achieve or exceed that number each spring. Forget long-term averages and other irrelevant benchmarks. We need to break from conventional thinking here. The number should be chosen to produce a surplus of breeders during poor production years. But that will give us full benefits when nature favors us with good production seasons, taking maximum advantage of those priceless and unfortunately infrequent opportunities.

Combine this with emphasis on strategies to improve the productivity of the breeding ground. We have a relatively uncomplicated and straightforward path to that goal in California, with solid strategies already in place, more on the way – and with large financial and land commitments by interested parties. Far more uncertainty confounds the task in the mid-continent, the current debate between Delta and DU over the value and practicality of predator control providing a prime example. The problem with those debates, however, is that they’ve been conducted, to date, with implicit acceptance of the AHM management goal, i.e., maximizing sustainable harvest. Experience over the last five years has shown that AHM is a failed instrument for achieving its stated goal; but that debate obscures the real question – the continuing validity of the goal itself.

If we care about the future, we should gear our efforts toward maximum sustainable population. Specifically, that means managing for ample breeding counts in light of optimum habitat capability, while at the same time, devoting continuing effort to improve that capability. It’s the goal that counts, and the state of mind that nourishes and sustains that goal.

When you hear the howls of derision that greet this idea, ask the howlers if it has ever been tried. Where are the studies of breeding population critical mass for optimum production? Who has authored the insightful papers that relate migrant populations and hunter kill to breeding numbers the following spring, species by species and by population trends, whether rising or falling?

Ask the questions yourself if curiosity burns within you. If you don’t have the time or the opportunity or the patience to do so, then take my word for it. The studies don’t exist. The debate over the goal lies submerged in a sea of irrelevant squabbles.

Why do we even bother with waterfowl management? Is it solely in the hopes of having a few good days next fall, a few full straps to feature in the standard post-hunt photograph? Or do we spend our money, undertake Herculean projects and have these debates because we desire to leave behind a legacy of fall skies full of birds, a legacy that has a fighting chance to endure, despite the pressures of growing population and the advances of technology?

Any reader of these pieces knows where we at Madduck stand on that one.

¹ The names are such ponderous mouthfuls, let’s refer to the Central Valley Habitat Joint Venture as the “Joint Venture” and the Implementation Plan as the “Plan” for the sake of brevity.

² The Plan also included a target for breeding habitat – but that was not the major emphasis.

³ One of the biologists who participated in drafting the Plan now contends that it used “flawed” methodology. Those who share that view claim to have the immutable answers today. But in waterfowl biology, today’s immutable truth becomes yesterday’s flawed methodology, to be replaced on tomorrow’s dawn with new and improved immutable truths, and so on, ad nauseum, a process by which today’s right answers become yesterday’s error. And as soon as today becomes tomorrow the process repeats itself, a cycle that today’s keepers of deathless wisdom tend to forget.

⁴ This number is below our long-term average. I consider the Mallard Legacy Program an enlightened and important step – but I can’t understand why the authors would pick a target below the average we hit without the program in place. This leads to the question: Why do we need large additional acreage to reach a goal we already reach or exceed most years without those acres? Why spend millions and commit vast new acreages to reach a level we reach without those commitments? More to the point: why not set a higher goal? What is the upper limit here? Certainly it is higher than 500,000.

⁵ Our mallards seem to favor wheat fields for nesting purposes, for example. Such fields offer optimum conditions – large expanses of dense grasslands, often in close proximity to irrigation canals, ponds and rice fields where the hen can take her brood. Unfortunately, wheat harvest destroys the nests that are still in use, a particular problem when we have an “early” spring. Encouraging wheat farmers to defer harvest for a week or so and to collect eggs for propagation at our egg salvage stations could add several percentage points to the annual production.

⁶ We had comparable weather in the spring of ’98 with breeding bird numbers roughly 10% higher than our counts this spring. Despite a seven bird limit, a long season and excellent hunting that fall, our counts hit an all-time high the following spring, a number we have not approached since. This strongly suggests that whether compensatory kill is a valid general theory or not, we can afford a liberal regulatory package when we have strong production. The trick is not getting hooked on the concept.