While spring flooding throughout much of the greater Mississippi River Valley is all but assured this year, one benefit to the expected surplus of water in Minnesota and especially in North and South Dakota, as well as prairie Canada, is expected excellent breeding conditions for ducks.
"This is nothing but good news for ducks," Delta Waterfowl's scientific director, Frank Rohwer, said. "When you get great water conditions, you get more females breeding where they should be breeding…on the prairies."
Noting that last spring was the wettest on record for Saskatchewan, Rohwer and others at Delta said that province's Watershed Authority predicts above normal run-off for the southern half of the province this spring.
"It's pretty extraordinary to have great water conditions over virtually the whole of the prairie pothole region," says John Devney, Delta Waterfowl's senior vice-president. "This should mean we'll have really good populations. Ducks seem to come out of the woodwork and immigrate into the prairies when they're wet."
Though nesting conditions for ducks have been deteriorating on the prairies for years, the expected wet spring and summer across U.S. and Canadian prairies likely will compensate for the losses — at least in the near term.
"The fact of the matter is you have vast chunks of prairie that are not as productive as they were," Devney said. "We've lost a lot of upland nesting cover. While I'm looking forward to a great breeding season, it's a bit of a false positive because Mother Nature is doing all the work."
Hens that lose their nests are able to re-nest when water is abundant, Delta said. Mallards are the most prolific re-nesters among ducks, but all species re-nest under good water conditions.
Survival of ducklings also increases in wet years, in large part because the efficiency of predators is reduced.
"In every single study of broods that we've looked at, you get much higher survival when it's wet", said Rohwer.
"The small wetlands stay wet and we're going to have that sort of situation," says Rohwer. "We're going to have water spilling out into agricultural land… a disaster for farmers, but it's going to great for ducks. It's exactly what we ask for when we want a fabulous duck season."
