To some individuals the drought on the northern prairies is no cause for concern. The fact that duck production this spring will be minimal, especially for early nesting mallards and pintails, is not troublesome. The fact this autumn’s fall flight will be very thin is no reason to reduce the season length and bag limit to preserve breeding stock. These individuals argue that when water returns to the northern prairies, and the shallow potholes fill with water, the ducks will “bounce back,” as they always have.

The bounce-back theorists are encouraged by a few professionals who, a few years ago when water was plentiful, argued that while we might over-shoot ducks when populations are low, we cannot over-shoot them when populations are high. Now that populations are declining rapidly, suggesting the need for restrictive regulations to preserve our breeding flocks, these professionals suddenly find themselves stricken with biological amnesia. Today they declare we need to continue long seasons and high bag limits during these bleak times to prevent hunters from quitting the marsh, the number of hunters being more important to the future of wildfowling than the number of ducks.

These notions are repeated in casual conversation, on internet forums and at least one conservation-organization journal. Are they superficial, deceptive and threatening to our future?

The issues come at a critical time. As I write these words in early May, drought’s grim embrace has caused dust storms to sweep across parts of the prairies. The Dakotas are generally dry, as are southern Saskatchewan and Alberta. Southwestern Manitoba has water, but little nesting cover. One friend who recently motored across the region described Manitoba’s vast expanse of freshly plowed earth as a “black desert.”

Northward migrating mallards and pintails already have over-flown the dry prairies, telling us that for these two species juvenile production will be minimal and this autumn’s flight will be very thin. Conditions are not expected to materially improve for later nesting species, with similar results for the fall flight.

A backward glance at pothole surveys discloses that the most recent year of bountiful nesting and brood-rearing water occurred in 1999. The following five years produced two years of average water conditions and three years of drought. This year probably will be classified as a drought year.

What raises alarms for those concerned about the future of our sport is a comparison of the years 1976-81 and 1999-04. The time periods reflect similar drought conditions that followed periods of abundant prairie water

We begin by looking at May potholes from 1976-81 and 1999-04. The year 1976 marked the last year of abundant water during the “wet ‘70s” and 1999 was the last year of abundant water during the mid-to-late 1990s. The following graph tells the story.

Figure 1. From 1976-81 the number of North American potholes declined 65 percent. From 1999-04 the number of potholes dropped 42 percent. Source: USFWS

The data shows that habitat conditions deteriorated at a faster rate during the earlier five-year period. Pothole numbers for the years 1976-81 declined 65 percent, compared to only 42 percent from 1999-04.

This tells us ducks faced a significantly greater loss of breeding habitat from 1976-81 than during the years 1999-04.

What happened to mallards during the same time periods?

Figure 2. North America’s mallard breeding population declined 19 percent from 1976-81 and 31 percent from 1999-04. Source: USFWS

The data tells us North American mallard breeding populations fell 19 percent from 1976-81 and 31 percent from 1999-04.

Thus, today’s mallards are not only declining at a faster rate, but the accelerated decline is occurring under better wetland conditions.

What could cause this contrary and alarming state of affairs? The answers are two-fold. Lower juvenile production rates coupled with higher kills stemming from longer seasons, larger bag limits, earlier opening dates, later closing dates and spinning-wing decoys.

None of these facts concern our brethren who preach that ducks will “bounce back” when pothole numbers increase. To a minor degree, they are correct. We can expect somewhat larger fall flights when breeding conditions improve. But this view is so short-sighted it constitutes intellectual negligence. The following graph explains why.

Figure 3. Average juvenile productivity declined under all prairie water conditions from 1974-89 and 1990-02. Under high-water conditions the number of juveniles per adult dropped from 1.52 to 1.02. Under average water years the juvenile-to-adult ratio fell from 1.25 to 1.05 and during low water from .99 to .90. Source: USFWS

As you can see, during the past three decades juvenile productivity declined under all pothole conditions, but is especially severe during high and average water years. The drop in productivity means that under similar wetland conditions future fall flights will be smaller than those of the past.

Indeed, today’s juvenile productivity rate remains nearly identical under all water conditions. This means we no longer can depend on the return of bountiful prairie water to trigger the explosive growth and bountiful fall flights that historically followed past droughts.¹

The data is abundantly clear that a significant change has occurred in waterfowl population dynamics. The size of the breeding population – not numbers of potholes – is now the primary determinant of the number of juveniles that wing southward. This marks a startling change from the past, an alarming paradigm shift that warns the preservation of bountiful numbers of breeding ducks is more important today than at any time in history. The lower we allow today’s breeding flocks to decline, the longer it will take for a recovery, if a significant recovery is possible.

This changing dynamic is ignored by bounce-back theorists, whose attitude reflects the belief that a duck in the bag is more important than a duck on the breeding grounds. The bounce-back theorists are either profoundly ignorant or abysmally naïve about the changes that have occurred in the past third of a century.

Perhaps more absurd is the professional notion that high bag limits, long seasons, early openers, late closures and spinning-wing decoys will prevent hunters from quitting the marsh. This might be true if hunters enjoyed staring at empty skies. Most do not. High bag limits and long seasons will be viewed for what they are – empty promises. Hunters will exit the marsh in significant numbers. The notion that financial contributions from these potential dropouts are critical to preserve great numbers of ducks is equally meaningless. All conservation efforts to date produce 10 percent or less of the fall flight.

The historic and biological lessons herald an ominous warning. We cannot continue our profligate ways and expect ducks and duck hunting to flourish far into the future. Perhaps the most stark and haunting insight into the current state of affairs came from a duck hunter who concluded, “The last generation of waterfowlers is, in fact, among us now."

This is a deeply troubling thought.

¹ Some argue near-record mallard breeding populations reported from 1995-99 disprove the belief that we are over-shooting our flocks. This argument ignores the fact that no birth/death biological data – harvest, harvest rates, age-ratios – can provide confirming proof for the extraordinary population increase. The primary cause most likely involves Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) grasslands that attracted immigrant mallards from less intensively surveyed or unsurveyed regions into the Dakotas beginning in 1994 after water returned to the prairies. This immigration skewed the breeding population survey upward, resulting in a false positive that continues to this day.