Waterfowl Management Must Listen To What the Science is Telling Us

It's been aptly said that today’s common sense is yesterday’s grand discovery.

Early conservation leaders like Aldo Leopold and Albert Hochbaum advocated letting science chart the course of wildlife management. In recent years, ego, passion, and resistance to change have replaced science at the helm, and waterfowl management has drifted off course.

While attending Delta Waterfowl’s student symposium I was reminded of Delta’s 65-year commitment to science and learning. Recently approximately 100 students, professors and other interested duck people gathered at the Delta Marsh to review our current student research program.

This year Delta students are working on 22 projects across the continent. In Manitoba one student is trying to discover how ducks remain abundant in the Minnedosa area despite nest success far below the maintanence level. Other students are studying the population dynamics of skunks and raccoons around Minnedosa, while still others are exploring the problems facing imperiled species like scaup and pintails.

Possibly the best part of the seminar weekend involved the one-on-one contact with student advisors like Bob Clark from the University of Saskatchewan, Jim Lovron from the University of Wyoming and Tom Nudds from the University of Guelph. Late-night discussions with these brilliant scientists were especially stimulating and enlightening. Although they don’t always agree with every management tool, I believe they agree that “our best science is always the high ground”.

Of course, “best science” is a relative term. A rigorous academician might say there is no method fully tested and/or capable of bringing back the flights of the 70's. This uncertainty of ultimate truth—let’s face it, waterfowl science often produces as many questions as answers—might cause the purist to be nothing more than a casual observer, waiting in the wings until the ultimate truth is revealed.

While protecting habitat has to be the first and most important goal of waterfowl management, a plethora of scientific evidence indicates that habitat projects alone are no longer enough to produce the fall flights of earlier decades. Fiscal restraints and the social and economic realities of our modern world all but preclude the possibility of restoring the habitat necessary to achieve the “habitat threshold” science has already shown is necessary to increase duck recruitment.

In the meantime, hunters—the most important constituent of waterfowl science—will no longer tolerate inaction or failed attempts to protect and enhance our waterfowl resource.

Delta's passionate belief is that we must utilize the “best science” to supplement habitat in an attempt to produce a tangible outcome measured in ducks, not merely acres.

As we strive to put back more than we take, we should call for a return to the “best science” of the day. The management tools proposed by Delta are as firmly rooted in science as our student research program is rooted in Leopold, Hochbaum and the Delta Station.

To ignore the science at our disposal discredits the efforts of those students and of all scientists.

Habitat preservation and predator management are not mutually exclusive, but actually different components of the same mission. Predator management and Hen Houses have been scientifically proven to increase nest success—duck production—two- and three-fold at a cost low enough so as not to detract from our habitat goals.

Delta's vision for selective use of these tools will allow us to work towards land-use reform while at the same time addressing the problem of low recruitment on the prairies. That’s not an either-or scenario; it’s a win-win solution.

It’s time to abandon the business-as-usual mantra. It’s time to stop measuring progress in terms of acres preserved, and start using duck production as our yardstick for success. It’s time to stop talking about utopian goals for the future and recognize the social and economic realities management faces on the current landscape.

It’s time to let science be our rudder.

Thomas P. Hutchens, MD
Chairman, DWF