Courtesy of Richard Hinton and the Bismarck Tribune

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Altered Funding of Waterfowl Efforts Contentious

By RICHARD HINTON, Bismarck Tribune

Delta Waterfowl is sounding alarm bells about a potential about-face on an idea to increase the percentage of duck stamp dollars going to the prairie breeding grounds.

The proposal calls for incremental increases in the percentage of Migratory Bird Conservation Fund dollars going to North Dakota and South Dakota, which attract the bulk of the ducks nesting in the United States. Most of those additional dollars would go to taking perpetual wetland and grassland easements and title fee acquisitions.

The problem is that any new money channeled into the duck nesting areas is money being taken away from other regions, and that's where the objections are arising.

"At this point, I'm a little concerned," said John Devney, senior vice president for Delta Waterfowl, a Bismarck-based waterfowl conservation group. "You never know how the political system is going to treat those sort of issues, especially with finite resources."

Lloyd Jones, refuge coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Bismarck office, acknowledges there are concerns.

"They have staffs and programs working on waterfowl projects," he said. Delta said the reallocation was scheduled to be phased in over three years beginning with fiscal year 2005. Under the plan, the Prairie Pothole Region's allocation was increased to 32 percent this year and the region is scheduled to get 39 percent in 2006 and 46 percent in 2007. The region averaged about 27 percent between 2001 and 2004. The MBCF receives revenues from the sale of the federal duck stamp, import duties on guns and ammunition and several other sources.

The biology, Jones said, is that 90 percent of the factors that influence duck populations occur on the breeding grounds of North Dakota and South Dakota. Among those factors are hen survival, nest success and brood survival. Factors from southern wintering grounds make up the other 10 percent.

"They're not raising ducks," Jones said of the concerns coming from elsewhere. "If ducks do well up here, migratory bird opportunities in their territory will do well. But they can't have ducks without us."

Devney urged concerned hunters to register their support of the reallocation by visiting the Delta Web site, www.deltawaterfowl.org. "I think if hunters are heard on this issue, it will move forward, just by bringing the constituency to bear on the policy makers." A final decision on the allocation could be reached when the Migratory Bird Conservation Commission meets June 21.

Jones said science should be on the side of the breeding-ground states. "This is the key area for the future of migratory birds in North America," he said. "I think we will see an increase in more funding. But how much and when is yet to be answered.

"I think we clearly will see a benefit from this process."

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Copyright 2005 Bismarck Tribune. Republished here with the permission of Bismarck Tribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the Bismarck Tribune.