Delta Waterfowl Photo of the Month for July: Marc Touchet of Abbeville, Louisiana. Vote in August's contest today!
Delta's Minnesota Hen House Partnership Takes Flight
Matt Chouinard has been a busy, busy biologist.
In the last three years, Chouinard’s job has been to erect and repair countless Hen Houses throughout the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) of western and southwestern Minnesota, historically a duck-producing stronghold.
The goal: to increase the local mallard breeding population by protecting nesting hens from predators like skunks, raccoons and fox. His work is part of an ongoing Delta Waterfowl-Minnesota Department of Natural Resources partnership.
Breeding Population Survey Released;
U.S. Continues to Attract Majority of Nesting Ducks in PPR
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.
Delta Scientific Director Answers Questions About Oil Spill, Impacts to Waterfowl and Waterfowl Habitat
Delta Waterfowl Scientific Director Dr. Frank Rohwer has hunted ducks in the coastal marshes of Louisiana for more than 20 years.
“It’s a special, special place, and it breaks my heart seeing it despoiled more and more with each passing day,” he said.
Like other Gulf Coast waterfowlers, Rohwer is worried about the ongoing oil spill and what its impact will ultimately be on coastal wetland habitat and its fish and wildlife.
“This is environmental disaster that could affect ducks and duck hunters for years to come,” said Rohwer, who is also a professor at Louisiana State University’s School of Renewable Natural Resources.
More Oil Spill Coverage: USFWS Developing Strategy to Help Waterfowl 'Weather' Oil Spill | Letter to BP and Department of the Interior | Radio interviews
YouTube: It's Time for Amateur Film-makers to Start Treating Hunting with the Respect it Deserves
By Rob Olson - Delta Waterfowl President
Remember last summer when a trio of idiots in Saskatchewan videotaped an out-of-season shooting spree including sniping flightless waterfowl with a rifle? Rightfully, there was outrage far and wide and the culprits were nabbed. Justice served.
Some months later, I was surfing the internet, looking at duck-hunting videos on You Tube only to realize that the three dimwits were only the beginning. It turns out that video cameras open up a portal into our hunting world through which you might not want to journey. Let’s just say, over the course of four hours of looking at home videos, I saw way more of people doing nasty things under the guise of hunting than I ever wished I had.
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