Status of Prairie Ducks
Canada Very Wet....But the U.S. is Dry

Pass the word: The water is back, and so are the ducks.  

No doubt about it, the 2006 Waterfowl Breeding Population and Habitat Survey released in early July by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service paints a rosy picture of the prairie breeding grounds.  Just feast your eyes on these numbers:

The May pond count across the prairie Canada was the eighth highest in the 46 years biologists have been tracking Canadian ponds.

The total number of breeding ducks in the traditional survey area jumped 14 percent to 36.2 million birds.  That’s 9 percent above the long-term (1955-2006) average.

The breeding populations of six of the most popular species climbed into the top 10 historically.  Those species include green-winged teal, gadwalls, blue-winged teal, canvasbacks, redheads and northern shovelers.

Even the beleaguered pintail took a 32-percent jump from the previous year.

“There’s plenty of good news in the B-pop,” says Delta President Rob Olson of the breeding grounds survey, which is conducted jointly by the  FWS and the Canadian Wildlife Service. “The wetland count for prairie Canada was the highest it’s been since the mid-1990s, and that’s great news.  And six species are enjoying near-record breeding populations.  It would appear that Mother Nature has set the table for ducks.”

Is Olson predicting a banner year for duck hunters?   

“While everything looks good, we have to be careful about making predictions,” Olson warns.  “Prairie Canada is wet, so we have to be optimistic about the prospects for late-nesting species like shoveler, gadwall, green-winged teal and blue-winged teal.  Breeding populations of those species are extremely high, so it’s reasonable to expect some good production this year.

“But the numbers from the U.S. side of the region are a little deceptive,” Olson warns.  “The pond count from North and South Dakota was above average when the survey was conducted in May,” he says, “but the Dakotas have been extremely dry since then.  The drought in the Dakotas is the third-worst in recorded history.”

Olson says arid conditions across the Dakotas and Montana are a concern because a third of the survey area’s breeding mallards—2.3 million—settled there this spring before moisture conditions deteriorated.  Another concern is that those areas that did have moisture in May aren’t necessarily the most productive. 

John Solberg, pilot-biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Bismarck, North Dakota, agrees.  “We saw pockets of very good moisture,” Solberg says, “but the places we’d really like to see wet—like the Coteau—were actually pretty dry.  Over-all, we had a lot of marginal conditions even in May, and things have really dried up since then.”

When asked to predict the production potential of the Dakotas, Solberg said, “In May I predicted below-average production across South Dakota and average production in North Dakota.  Given the dry conditions today, I’d say those predictions were optimistic.  We’re not going to produce many ducks (in the Dakotas) this year. I certainly wouldn’t expect the second-nesting efforts to be very productive.”

As Ron Reynolds of FWS’ Habitat and Population Evaluation Team (HAPET) points out, “not all ponds are created equally.  We know that if we get a bunch of ponds in the Coteau, we’ll get better production than if we have the same number of ponds in the Drift Prairie, because we have better nesting cover in the Coteau.  And we know we’ll get better production if we have lots of ponds in Saskatchewan than if we get lots of ponds in Manitoba.”

The lack of a mallard response to wet conditions in Saskatchewan is another growing concern among waterfowl managers.  The pond count in Saskatchewan has jumped 86 percent since 2004, but the number of mallards nesting there has gone up only 14 percent.  

Wrote the authors of the Saskatchewan survey, “Surprisingly, our estimate for

mallards has not been as quick to respond to the improved habitat in the Parklands.  Mallards typically prefer the Parkland region and in previous wet years we have seen big increases in the population estimates over a short period of time.   For example, between 1995 and 1996 there was a 16 percent increase in the mallard estimate and between 2002 and 2203 we had a 43 percent increase in the estimate.  Since 2004 the mallard estimate has increased 6-7 percent.”           

Despite the having 2.7 million May ponds, Saskatchewan’s total of 1.8 million breeding mallards remains 12 percent below the long-term average.   Conversely, the 1.6 million wetlands on the U.S. side of the breeding grounds attracted 2.3 million mallards, 71 percent above its long-term average.

The mallard breeding population across the traditional survey area remains 3 percent below the long-term average.

Other Species

The words have been repeated so often they’re starting to sound like a broken record: “Scaup numbers dipped to an all-time low.”

The scaup breeding population was down another 4 percent to 3.2 million, 37 percent below the long-term average.

Also well below their LTA are wigeon (17 percent) and pintails (18 percent).  The pintail population rose to 3.4 million, up 32 percent from last year and 90 percent higher than 2002 when they hit an all-time low of 1.8 million.

Biologists aren’t sure what to make of the precipitous drop in wigeon numbers.  This year’s breeding population of wigeon was 2.2 million, a 30 percent drop from 1997 when it approached an all-time high.

Yet even as wigeon, scaup and pintails continue to struggle, and mallard numbers tread water, some species have soared.  Shovelers are up 69 percent from their long-term average, gadwalls are up 67, redheads 47, green-winged teal 39, blue-winged teal 30 and canvasbacks stand at 23 percent above the LTA.

“Duck hunters tend to look at the overall duck population,” says Olson, “but it’s a good idea to look at each species individually.  The breeding ecology of ducks varies greatly from species to species, and those differences—when viewed in the context of habitat conditions—tell us a lot.

“Pintails, for instance, will over-fly the prairie breeding grounds if they don’t find the right habitat conditions in the areas they prefer to nest.  They’ll sit out the nesting season up north where we don’t count them.  That’s one reason we’ve seen the big jump in pintail numbers the last few years: they’re coming back to the prairies and we’re counting them again.

“Gadwalls, blue-winged teal and shovelers are late-nesting species, which gives them a real advantage over mallards and pintails.  By the time the late-nesters arrive on the breeding grounds, upland conditions have improved and there’s more buffer prey available to predators.

“And last year moisture conditions across Canada really improved after the May survey was conducted, which benefited the late-nesting species more than the early nesters.

“There are a lot of factors to be considered before we draw any conclusions about the status of prairie ducks.”