Best duck numbers move to U.S.

By DENNIS ANDERSON, Star Tribune

Last update: July 4, 2009 - 9:34 PM

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has confirmed what seemed obvious for at least a month in the Dakotas: Breeding duck numbers are up this year, on the U.S. side of the border, and continentally.

The number of ducks returning north this spring rose 13 percent from a year ago, with many species poised to boost their numbers for the fall flight, given the generally positive nesting conditions that exist across U.S. and Canadian prairies -- with some exceptions.

These last include portions of prairie Saskatchewan and especially southern Alberta, which did not enjoy the heavy snows and spring rains similar areas to the east and south did last winter and spring.

For the first time, more ducks settled on the U.S. side of the Prairie Pothole region to breed (14 million) than in Canada (12.7 million.)

Perhaps even more amazingly, more pintails are nesting in the U.S. than in Canada, according to the annual spring population estimate.

"If you would have told me 10 years ago we'd have twice as many pintails nesting on the U.S. side of the breeding grounds as on Canadian prairies, I would have laughed in your face,'' Frank Rohwer, scientific director of Delta Waterfowl in Bismarck, N.D., said in statement following the service's announcement.

Also on the U.S. side, about 78 percent more blue-winged teal were counted than in Canada, and a record percentage of breeding mallards were counted here.

That's not entirely good news. Canada -- traditionally the continent's duck factory --has been losing its duck habitat as fast as, or faster than, the U.S., generally because of the lack of a broad-based, national farmland conservation program. In fact, had not so much water come to North and South Dakota prairies this spring, it's likely declining habitat conditions there -- those conditions overall are trending downward -- would have been made more obvious.

In the Dakotas, farmers and ranchers are breaking up the duck-rich prairie coteau region. And more than 1 million acres of CRP lands in the U.S. have been converted to cropland since 2007.

Whether those trends can be reversed so duck numbers can be stabilized -- even in "average'' water years on the prairies --is unknown.

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