Texas helps Ducks Unlimited reach 15 million-acre conservation milestone
- Tyler Hargrave
- Mar 26, 2021
- 5 min read
By Matt Wyatt, Houston Chronicle
Ducks Unlimited, an organization dedicated to the preservation of wetlands and waterfowl, reached the 15 million acres conserved milestone this month.
Ducks Unlimited hit a major milestone this month, breaking through the 15 million-acre mark.
Along with DU Canada and DU Mexico, the organization has worked to preserve habitat for waterfowl across the continent, resulting in more than 23,000 square miles of conservation.
The accomplishment comes after a year defined by adversity, and just four years after reaching 14 million acres.
“This groundbreaking number is a perfect example of how waterfowlers, outdoors enthusiasts and others with a passion for waterfowl and wetlands conservation can work together to achieve a common goal,” Ducks Unlimited CEO Adam Putnam said in a release.
“DU’s mission brings us together in good times and bad, attracts like-minded people to our cause and delivers results. In Fiscal Year 2020 alone, DU on-the-ground work protected or restored more than 600,000 acres of wetlands and associated uplands. Our conservation staff worked tirelessly throughout the pandemic, sleeping in repurposed ice fishing houses, campers and even tents to ensure our work never stopped. In fact, we’re accelerating our efforts to ensure we reach 16 million in record time.”
The 15 million acres are considered wholly conserved, and it’s the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the work DU does in North America.
“There’s a lot of other work that we do that we impact acres. But we think of these as the most important acres because they are restored or protected,” said Karen Waldrop, DU’s chief conservation officer.
Projects on the Central Flyway, and Texas, played a significant role in this achievement.
Texas winters 90 percent of the ducks in the flyway, as well as 75 percent of its snow geese. The Gulf Coast Prairie region, which also includes Louisiana, winters 95 percent of gadwall, 80 percent of green-winged teal, 80 percent of redheads, 60 percent of lesser scaup, 25 percent of pintails and more, making it one of the top priority areas for DU. The organization’s most recent conservation report for Texas indicates 265,651 acres have been conserved in the state, most along the Gulf Coast.
“Texas is an important ground for us,” Waldrop said.
“The habitat there is critical for birds to have enough reserves for breeding and the migration back. The wintering grounds are extremely important, as well, and some of our priority areas.”
Among the conservation initiatives in the state is the Texas Prairie Wetlands Project, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. The TPWP is a partnership between DU, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service that works with private landowners, especially rice producers, to restore habitat for wintering waterfowl in a 28-county area.
Nearly 90,000 acres of wetlands have been restored because of TPWP.
The heart of some of DU’s efforts on the Gulf Coast focuses on the production of rice, one of the most important food sources for waterfowl. Like marsh habitat, rice acreage has declined over generations. DU partnered with USA Rice to create the Rice Stewardship Program and try to reverse the trend, promoting rice production in the Central Valley of California, the Mississippi Alluvial Valley and the Gulf Coast. 70,000 acres have been impacted by this program.
Rice is a piece of the conservation puzzle in Texas, and shoreline protection and wetland restoration projects on the Upper Coast, including retrofitting levees, repairing water control structures and constructing breakwaters at Texas Point, McFaddin and Anahuac national wildlife refuges, are particularly important to mottled ducks, a species of heightened concern in Texas.
Unlike most of the waterfowl that hunters and birdwatchers enjoy in Texas, mottled ducks aren’t migratory. They live from Alabama to Tamaulipas, Mexico, but most mottled ducks reside on the Chenier Plain of Texas and Louisiana. Many live and breed on the Upper Coast.
“That country is tremendously important to wintering waterfowl. But a lot of that is at the heart of where mottled ducks live, too. They’ll certainly be year-round benefactors of that program,” said Todd Merendino, DU’s manager of conservation programs in Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma.
Merendino said the water control structure projects are critically important for regulating water levels and salinities that will support the types of vegetation and invertebrate production beneficial for waterfowl. With better habitat comes more birds, and better hunting.
DU is working on projects like that on every single Wildlife Management Area and National Wildlife Refuge on the Texas coast. In 2020, DU conserved 19,978 acres, plus 40,000 Conservation Stewardship Program acres in the state. The projection for 2021 is 38,582 acres plus another 24,000 from CSP.
The completion of the Dagger Island project, a decade in the making, highlights the conservation gains made on the Texas coast in the last year. Ducks Unlimited and Coastal Conservation Association Texas collaborated to build breakwaters to protect the shoreline of Dagger and Ransom Islands from wind, waves and traffic in the Corpus Christi Ship Channel. The project protects 577 acres of seagrass beds in Redfish Bay and has positive implications for waterfowl as well as coastal fisheries.
DU’s work in the region will not slow down, either. There remains a habitat deficit on the coast.
“If you look at the habitat needs of wintering waterfowl…the nesting requirement of those birds, and as you come South, the food requirements of those birds. The number of acres required to sustain and grow those populations is tremendous,” Merendino said.
“There’s still a lot of work to be done, for sure.”
That work in Texas extends beyond the coast, too.
DU is active on East Texas WMAs. The Gus Engeling and Richland Creek WMAs are undergoing wetland rehabilitation. In the Panhandle, DU is part of the Texas Playa Conservation Initiative. 500 acres of playa lakes are set for restoration in 2021. Not only do playas provide ample waterfowl habitat, the groundwater recharge helps human communities as well.
DU’s work up the Central Flyway is also just as important to Texas hunters and birdwatchers. The U.S. Prairie Pothole Region, which exists in North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota and Montana, is considered the “duck factory” and is the breeding home of millions of ducks and geese. DU’s conservation map indicates over 1.4 million acres conserved in the Dakotas. Prairie and Boreal Canada, too, are crucial to waterfowl reproduction.
DU will continue to work with its partners to preserve these areas, as well as in the Atlantic, Mississippi, and Pacific Flyways, to reach 16 million conserved acres that will ensure the future of wetland habitat, bird populations and the pastime of waterfowl hunting for generations to come.
“The partnerships is the key. You go from 14 to 15 million, and you’ve got a lot of people with a lot of energy and passion pulling,” Merendino said.