Digital Journal Element 3

Waterfowl Conservation and Management

Waterfowl Hotspots

 Prairie Pothole Region (Smith and Sypolt 2013)

 

The Prairie Pothole Region is a series of wetlands that is crucial for North American waterfowl.  It is currently where over fifty percent of North American Dabbling ducks breed in this region. The area totals about 78 million hectares (Baldassarre and Bolen 2006). It also provides stop over sites for about 80 percent of the waterfowl species found in North America. This area is also one of the largest agricultural areas in North America. Massive amounts of wetlands are being converted to make room for additional corn plants.This has led to habitat loss and shifts in habitat selection.

Northern Tundra, Forest, and River Deltas (Baldassarre and Bolen 2006)

 

 The Northern Tundra occur north, east, and west of the Prairie Pothole region covering almost a billion hectares of land. This area provides breeding habitat to most of the geese that inhabit North America. This area is comprised of multiple different habitat types including " tundra, open boreal forest, closed boreal forest, river delta, and mixed forest." 

 Texas Marshland

The Gulf coast of Mexico, including  Texas and Louisiana are wintering habitat for millions of waterfowl who utilize the Central American and Mississippi Flyway. "The most common species are northern pintail, blue and green-winged teal, redhead, lesser scaup, mottled ducks, and black-bellied and fulvous whistling ducks.  Over half of the Central Flyway waterfowl population winters on the Texas Gulf Coast."(DU 2013) These areas make up more that half of the coastal marshes in the lower 48 of the United States. These wetlands are also threatened by massive conversion and pollution events caused by human agriculture(Baldassarre and Bolen 2006).

The Mississippi Alluvial Valley (Ducks Unlimited 2013)

 The Mississippi Alluvial Valley is offshoot of the Mississippi river. This habitat had a combination of types including forested, wetlands, swamps, cypress-tupelo brakes, scrub, and emergent wetlands. This habitat also provides wintering grounds for northern pintails, green-winged teal, and northern shovelers. This habitat is also facing problems with conversion and degradation. The style of agriculture is unnaturally supplementing lesser snow goose populations, making them a pest species in this area. 

Playa Lakes

The Playa lakes are a series of ponds periodically filled by rain water located in Texas, Pkloahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas. Theses ponds can be freshwater or saline depending upon the amount of ground water received by the pond. They are the wintering home for over 2 million waterfowl and, many other species year round. This habitat is another wetland habitat being threatened by agriculture, water shortages and, habitat conversion.

The California Central Valley (Baldassarre and Bolen 2006)

The California Central Valley is one of the most important stopovers for millions of migrating waterfowl in North America, including Canada geese, Brant geese, Snow geese, and Aleutian Cackling geese.At times it has supported more than 70 percent of the flyway populations of certain species.California is also one of the states that has suffered the worst conversion of wetlands. The wetlands of the central valley were formed from the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. Multiple dams have been put into place to restrict water flow of these two rivers and, to convert wetlands to agricultural spots. The massive loss of wetlands has encourage the implementation of moist soil management, described in element two.

Non-government Organizations (Wendt and Roughgarden 2013)

Waterfowl and Wetlands Trust

Mission: To monitor, research, create and restore wetlands and widlife. 

Area: Centralized in the UK

Website:

http://www.wwt.org.uk/

Ducks Unlimited

 Mission: To conserve, restore, and manage wetlands in the best interest of North American waterfowl

Area: United States

Website:

http://www.ducks.org/

California Waterfowl Association

 Mission: To conserve California's waterfowl wetlands and heritage

Area: California

Website:

http://www.calwaterfowl.org/

Delta Waterfowl

 Mission: To preform research on the waterfowl present in the Delta and create sound plan for conservation of such waterfowl. 

Area: North United States and Canada

Website:

 http://www.deltawaterfowl.org/

Long Point Waterfowl

Mission:Dedicated to waterfowl and wetland research, conservation and education

Area: Canada

Website:

http://longpointwaterfowl.org/

Literature Cited

Baldassarre, G. A. and E. G. Bolen. 2006. Waterfowl Ecology and Management, Second Edition. Krieger Publishing Company. Malabar, Florida.

Ducks Unlimited. 2013 <http://www.ducks.org/texas/tx-content/texas-care>
Smith, L. and E. T. Sypolt. Prairie Pothole Region. Humboldt State Univeristy Moodle Site. <http://learn.humboldt.edu/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=26165>
Wendt, C. and J. Roughgarden. Waterfowl Management: Waterfowl NGOs