Ducks Unlimited Podcast

Mike Brasher: Everybody, welcome back. Thanks for joining us again. I'm your host on this episode, Dr. Mike Brasher, and I've been on a little bit of a travel circuit here lately. I'm joining you from Bismarck, North Dakota for this episode. I'm sitting down with our Director of Operations for Conservation here in the Great Plains region, Dr. Johann Walker. I've had him on before. We've been up here for a few meetings this week and took the opportunity to sit down with him here this morning. Johan, good to connect with you again.

Johann Walker: Yeah, happy to join you, Mike. Look forward to the discussion.

Mike Brasher: We are here on, gosh, what is the day? It's March 22nd. I'm looking out the window. We've got snow on the landscape. That's a good thing. That's one of the things we want to talk about is sort of habitat conditions. It's that time of the year when we look to the prairies to kind of figure out how things are unfolding. We've talked a lot over the past several years about sort of persistent drought conditions, and every time we in the South, mid-latitude states, anybody that doesn't live here sees snow falling across the Dakotas or the prairies of Saskatchewan and Alberta and Canada, we think, okay, that's good, it's gonna solve the problem. But the reality is actually a little bit different, and that's one of the things that I wanted us to talk about is sort of putting the depth of this drought into context. You've been up here for a number of A number of years, you got great perspective in that regard. So I flew in the other day, looked out the window of the airplane and saw a lot of brown, didn't see a lot of water. Given your years of experience here, try to characterize what this landscape looks like now. from a water deficit standpoint, we can just start there.

Johann Walker: I think we got used to, in the early 2000s through 2015 or so, a really remarkable wet period in the prairies and most of your dedicated listeners are well aware of that. But that was an unusual period and we've dried out since then a little bit at a time across a really broad swath of the prairies. And that matters because when you get those really big populations building up over say a four or five year period populations of prairie ducks, It takes widespread kind of early wetness, snow melt runoff in the prairies to fill those small wetlands and that builds over a series of years. Well, the reverse is true as well. When we come back down that ladder, the deficit builds over a series of years and it gets drier over time. And that's where we find ourselves right now, Mike. I mean, we're in the situation where I'm with everybody here. Any snow helps, and we're glad to see it. But individual snowstorms in the prairies are just a good sign. It's like, yep, that's great, but will it solve the problem? No, we need… one after another after another and probably a few years to get back to the kinds of large populations that we got used to. Am I frightened? No. But I'm concerned because there's a variety of things going on in the background in addition to this drought, which is natural. that kind of set us up to wonder, do we have the resilience we had before to build back up to those populations? And so things like when people say to me, how long will it take? Will this fix it? I really have to say, I don't know.

Mike Brasher: You know, I was watching the Weather Channel this morning before I came in here, and they had a map up displaying the snow deficit just for this year, for this winter period, and for portions of the U.S. prairies. Of course, the Weather Channel doesn't really show things up into Canada. You know, there's like a stark line there. That's right. So, here in portions of the U.S. prairies, as you get eastward a little bit into Wisconsin, Minnesota, we're talking about two to three feet. deficits, snow deficits this year just gives you some indication of this year alone what the deficit is and you were telling me yesterday we're in a multi-year drought and those just as you were describing that dryness kind of compounds on itself and it takes a while of persistent wet conditions to fully recover back to those good conditions and that's that's where we find ourselves. With respect to the snow that we see on the ground out here right now, it has it's been a light snow the past few days, maybe inch and a half, two inches of snow. There's not a lot of moisture in this in this snow it doesn't seem like to me. Now this weekend there is another storm coming through pushing in from the west coast that's going to drop eight, ten, twelve inches of snow across a band through Eastern Montana, Western North Dakota, down into South Dakota. It's not going to cover the entire prairies. It gets into, I think, a little bit of Saskatchewan. All of that helps. But this is also sort of a good illustration of how these snowstorms come through. And they don't uniformly cover the prairies. The prairies, as we often just refer to it, it's a massive landscape. It covers five states, portions of five states here in the US. three provinces in Canada. If you've never been to Canada, provinces are large, especially in the central Mississippi flyway portions here in the western part of Canada. So that's a massive landscape. So you don't really often get storms that will put water across that entire landscape. And that's why in every single year we get some reports of good habitat conditions in this part of the prairies, in the eastern Dakotas, for example, or in southwestern or southeastern Saskatchewan. Every year, and we try to talk about this, that's why it's important to think about a large scale of conservation delivery. You have to maintain some intact habitat for these birds across that entire landscape so that you can benefit from the spatial variation in how these storms deliver precipitation, right?

Johann Walker: Absolutely, Mike. I mean, I think that is such an important point. I mean, we're dealing with a piece of real estate the size of Texas. And so some of you are more familiar with that. Don't expect the weather in Galveston to be like the weather in Amarillo. That's right. That's right. And so we're kind of… Dealing with that exactly. There will be places in the prairies this year that have decent habitat conditions. And there will be places with a large semi-permanent component in the wetland base that will have water and will have ducks. But it's unlikely, even with the nice snow we'll probably get this weekend, that'll mostly hit south of where we are right now. that will have, unless things really stay wet consistently week after week, a set of conditions that's widespread enough to really kickstart the kind of recovery I know we're all excited about when we imagine it. So, this year, you know, I'm hopeful that I see a few things. Mike's absolutely right. You're right. The snow deficit is pretty immense. And it's so strange here. I had an old friend who used to say, you know, in the prairies, the average is a number you blow through on the way to the other extreme. And that's what it feels like this year, right? North Dakota got over a hundred inches of snow in Bismarck alone last year. Wow, I forgot about that. That was the second snowiest winter on record in Bismarck and across most of central North Dakota. This year, we're in the exact opposite situation. We basically have had almost no snow, what prairie people refer to as an open winter.

Mike Brasher: Now, a lot of that snow last year in Bismarck started around January, February, but then it continued into March and even April if I remember correctly, right?

Johann Walker: Yeah, we had an interesting setup last year where we had storms that gave us about two feet of snow around Veterans Day. I remember because I buried my jack-o'-lanterns and I didn't see them again. I didn't have time to get him in, didn't see him again until April when the flower beds melted off. So there was this steady like snow came and it stayed, but it also got wind blowing across it. I mean, there's so many things we could talk about here, but a lot of the moisture in that snow evaporated and we still were really depending. on the snows in March and April, which in the Dakotas are actually statistically the snowiest months. So there's cause for hope here this year in the Dakotas, but we're a long ways behind and we didn't catch up last year.

Mike Brasher: And it's going to take multiple years to really get out of this across the entire landscape of the prairies and that'll be a theme and a a message we continue to deliver. As you referenced here a few moments ago, drought is a natural phenomenon. None of us in this profession are sitting back, frantic over the occurrence of a drought. We knew this was coming. If you go back and read articles 10, 15 years ago, we were in the midst of that. that spell of that period of abundant moisture multiple years in a row. We knew that this time was coming. We didn't know which years it would show up, but we know enough about the climate of these landscapes to know it's going to get dry. And we were trying to talk about in those days about that reality and trying to message that and try to prepare people. It's difficult to do that though, right? By our very nature, we look at what's happening in the very near sort of temporal scale. It's hard for us to look out five, six years, and especially it's difficult for us to imagine how we'll react and how we'll process bad conditions. or bad conditions from an environmental standpoint here. So this is not a surprise, but it's something that we have to endure. We have to continue on our conservation mission, ensuring that whenever the good times do return, we hopefully have a habitat base that is sufficient to allow those birds to reproduce the way we know they can. Now that kind of takes me to my next topic here is the challenges that we continue to face. on this landscape and other landscapes upon which waterfowl depend. And so I want you to talk about that a little bit from the standpoint of waterfowl here in the prairies. And one of the things that makes this message a little more challenging in certain circles is the fact that waterfowl have fared relatively well compared to a lot of the other bird groups. When you look at a variety of reports, the State of the Birds report, Three Billion Birds report that many of us in our profession are familiar with, it talks about, uses waterfowl as an example of a success story of conservation and that is very true. But that doesn't mean the job is done. That doesn't mean the threats have abated with respect to habitat loss, habitat degradation. And nowhere is that message more important than the prairie. So talk about that from the challenges that we continue to face here, the work that y'all are doing.

Johann Walker: Absolutely. Thanks, Mike. I mean, you set that up well. I think we're in a situation here where Some of the byproducts of drought, which is natural, like reduced duck populations, none of us waterfowl enthusiasts really appreciate, but there are lots of good things going on in those dry wetlands that ensure that we're going to have the kind of resources that allow ducks to build populations quickly when the water comes back. And that's really one of your key points there, is this wetland base in the Prairie Pothole region is irreplaceable. There is nowhere else on the continent that can produce this kind of duck population. And the key is that those wetlands have to be on the ground. They have to be there when it gets wet again. And that's where we come in. Our partners, Ducks Unlimited, the folks who care about this landscape have put decades into protecting wetlands, protecting grassland, nesting cover, conserving other habitat around the region via other programs and priority areas, but trying especially to keep those highly productive small wetlands on the landscape. And it doesn't matter what the environmental conditions are. If we want skies full of waterfowl, We have to keep the landscape intact, much like you said very well, because we don't know where and how much water will show up. But just like we know a drought is coming, we know that wet times will come again too.

Mike Brasher: Johann, I want to talk also about some of the work that y'all do. I think there's also an important conversation that's happening out there among a lot of the waterfowl hunting community regarding harvest regulations and what the dry prairies and declining waterfowl populations in recent years means for regulations. We don't get involved in regulation setting. I make that very clear. But that doesn't mean that we are oblivious to the conversations that are occurring, the importance of hunting opportunities to our membership base, to the waterfowl hunting community in general, and the support that that generates for conservation. And so I want to… We'll talk about that here briefly, just at a high level, from a perspective, how we view that, not necessarily what's going to happen or anything. But right now, I want to take a break. On the backside of this, I'll ask you a few more questions about the work that goes on here, and then we'll close out with that conversation, just perspectives on harvest regulation. So stay with us, folks. We'll be right back. Welcome back, everybody. I am sitting here in Bismarck, North Dakota, across the desk from Dr. Johan Walker, our Director of Operations here in the Great Plains region. And we're talking about some of the work that they're doing here in the region to conserve, protect important waterfowl habitats. He gave a little bit of an update on habitat conditions. And it's not great. It's not great, but that's kind of part of what we have to go through periodically. I want to ask you a question, and I'll try to phrase it the way I would think my dad might, because he would always ask me this question, like, well, what do you do? So, for people that have never been to the prairies, number one, I would encourage they try to make an effort to do so. If they care about waterfowl, if they care about grassland birds, if they care about one of the last remaining magnificent places on the North American continent. Try to make it to the prairie pothole region, preferably in the spring as the birds are returning. Fall is not a bad time to be here either. Try to make it here. But for people that don't have the appreciation for this landscape, what it looks like, the type of work that you do, I'll ask you this question. What do you and your team do to conserve these habitats that are important to waterfowl. And that means I want you to talk about like, what does your conservation work look like? What are the programs that we use? What are these people doing on a daily basis to conserve the habitat that our supporters are helping us deliver on?

Johann Walker: Thanks, Mike. That's a big question, but a really neat one and fun to talk about for me. So I'm excited to tell you all about that. We have a team of about 40 professionals on the ground just in the Eastern Dakotas and the High Line of Montana, the Prairie Pothole region of those states that are in Ducks Unlimited's Great Plains region. And everything we do starts with biology, because we need to know that we're in the places that matter most to ducks, starting by showing up and putting an office in Bismarck, right? But the reason that landscape is so important to ducks, as we talked about a little bit earlier, Mike, and you know this well, is because of this incredibly high density of intact, glacially formed pothole wetlands, which are… depressions that range in size from, you know, living room size, temporary wetland all the way up to something that most people would say looks like a lake, you know, 50 or 60 acres. The most important ones for duck production are those small ones because prairie ducks tend to be territorial during the breeding season. So we key in on those resources. And that's just the beginning. Then it really starts to get interesting. In that area I described in the Dakotas and Montana, over 90% of the land is privately owned and used by folks to make a living doing agriculture, raising crops, raising livestock on their private land. So our team out here finds ways to work with those folks that allow them to find ways to diversify their income, make the living they need to make off their land, and also protect, conserve, restore, enhance the habitat, the grassland, the wetland habitat that's on their farm or ranch. And that looks like a person, a biologist from Ducks Unlimited, an agronomist from Ducks Unlimited, heading out to the farm gate just about every day to meet with landowners and come up with plans to deliver conservation programs alongside our partners at the Fish and Wildlife Service, our partners at USDA NRCS, our partners in the state agencies. We all kind of get together and do something that I've heard clever folks refer to as stone soup conservation, right? We start with emptying our pockets together as a group of partners, coming up with the programs. It might be a lease program, it might be an easement program, it might be a program to put fencing and water on CRP ground so somebody can put cattle out there and be more likely to keep it in grass. So it's a wide range of activities, Mike, but they're all aimed at like we talked about earlier, keeping those shallow wetlands on the landscape and keeping nesting cover in that same landscape so that when the ducks show up, they can do what they do.

Mike Brasher: What are some of the programs that you use to deliver on that? especially the ones that our listener base might be familiar with. And I'm thinking number one, the Fish and Wildlife Service Small Wetland Acquisition Program funded through duck stamp sales and so forth.

Johann Walker: Yeah, that program and that partnership is absolutely a cornerstone of our work in the Dakotas and Montana. So, what you're referring to, Mike, is permanent easements held in trust by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that are of an at-will agreement between a private landowner and the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Mike Brasher: Now, by at-will, you mean it's totally at the will of the landowner. There's nothing forced on them. Volunteer, incentive-based conservation is at the heart of what Ducks Unlimited does.

Johann Walker: We believe in private property rights just as much as the next group of folks out here. Absolutely. And that's exactly how it works, Mike. A landowner is approached with an offer if they are interested. First they're asked, hey, are you interested in looking at an offer? We're interested in the wetlands and grassland and we're interested in working with you to protect them on your property. They take a look at an offer if they're interested, and if they decide to accept the offer, then they enter into an agreement with the Fish and Wildlife Service to never drain, fill, or burn any of the identified wetlands on those legal descriptions, and never to plow up the grassland if it's intact grassland. And those, it's as simple as that. No one tells you how many cows you can put out there, when you can put them out there, if the wetlands are embedded in what's currently farm ground, you can farm those wetlands when they're dry. The program is a piece of genius that was thought up by people long before us who looked out across that landscape and said, we need to keep this stuff here, like you and I've been talking about, Mike. But we need it to be very simple because we need it to be durable over a long, long time. And you mentioned, I think that's such an important point to kind of linger on, a big source of funding for that program is the duck stamps that we all buy every fall. A whole lot of that money goes straight into keeping this prairie landscape intact through that program. Ducks Unlimited also puts a lot of our philanthropy into that program because it's a really durable, really effective way to put a base on the ground and just kind of to put a bow on that. At this point, after over 50 years of implementing that program in the Dakotas of Montana, the Fish and Wildlife Service and their partners can proudly say that about 30% of the breeding duck carrying capacity in the Dakotas of Montana has been permanently protected as a result of those efforts.

Mike Brasher: And with respect to our involvement in that program, what does that look like? Because it's a Fish and Wildlife Service program. Fish and Wildlife Service holds the easements. What do our folks do in helping deliver that?

Johann Walker: So we have a couple of roles. But one of the biggest roles that we play is in putting young folks, especially early career folks, and some retired folks, out on the landscape to canvas folks for interest in those offers I talked about before, to make those initial contacts, to work directly with those landowners. to find out who's interested, to evaluate their property for an offer, and to present offers back to the landowners. So we're an outreach function, partly, and we work with our partners to put those positions in the most strategic places we can across the landscape. But we also help with funding. So we raise a lot of private philanthropy from our generous donors and supporters. And we bring a fair bit of that here, like I said earlier, we typically match that with funding from the North American Wetlands Conservation Act grant program, and then use that funding to actually fund a fair number of easements ourselves and in places that we're very, very interested in, you know, those super high-density wetland landscapes and things like that.

Mike Brasher: You touched on that a couple of times and I was going to come back to it, which is the fact that we use our science to identify which of these landscapes are most important so we can be strategic, targeted with where we're concentrating a lot of our efforts. It's been decades of research that have informed our understanding of what portions of this vast, vast landscape are likely to be most productive for waterfowl once the conditions, when environmental conditions are are right and as long as those grasslands and wetlands remain intact. And so that's where the science then drives our activities on the ground. I also thought it's interesting to emphasize that as much technology as we have and as much new technology is emerging on a daily basis, artificial intelligence and everything else that's out there, the success of this program The success of all of our conservation programs depends on the relationships that we're able to build with our partners, whether they be private landowners, state agencies, federal agencies. At the end of the day, it's about the people that are on our team, the people that are on the teams of our partners, and then our ability to develop and maintain strong, beneficial relationships with the people that we need to be working with to steward the habitat that's on these landscapes. And that's, I guess, a message to everyone listening to this. Personal relationships remain one of the keys to effective conservation. So, if you're interested in this field, do not overlook that. The importance of being able to communicate effectively, interact effectively with people from all walks of life and representing respecting their views, their interest, what they need out of the land that we also are trying to work with them on. And so I know your team does a great job of that. We could talk about some of the other programs that you're involved in, some soil health initiatives, innovative programs that are trying to achieve outcomes through, let's say, nontraditional means and nontraditional pathways. That would probably take a little bit longer than what we have here for the remaining time this morning, but we'll come back to that some other time that we visit. I did want to close out with just a brief reference to this specter that's out there among some of the waterfowl hunting community of the possibility of restrictive regulations coming in the near future, and several people have asked me about this, and I think my response has been, well, I can guarantee you, someday, will have restrictive regulations. That's the way these populations work. They go up and down based on the condition of the landscape, which is a combination of environmental conditions as well as how it's shaping up in terms of the amount of grassland, wetland, and other important habitat types that are available for these birds. I can't say if that's going to be next year, the year after. There's a lot of things that play into that. We don't have a seat at the regulations table. What I did want to do, though, is just offer our perspective. I don't think any of us are panicking, and I think that's an important message to convey. I think it's also, I had a guy ask me a question the other day about, sort of speculating, saying that he's pretty sure at the end of the day it's habitat that drives the ups and downs of the population size. And I said, well, that is actually 100% true. Harvest regulations don't produce new ducks. Whenever you restrict regulations, that's not going to automatically increase the number of birds in the population. We can have our harvest regulation partners on here to talk about the proper way to interpret what it is we hope to achieve with harvest regulations, and I've talked with them before and generally stated is we're trying to sort of match the potential for us to take from the population, to match that with the population and habitat's potential to produce ducks, so that we're not over-harvesting. But that's sort of a different conversation. I think a couple of the points here is that none of us are panicking. This is not a period where it's like, oh, the sky is falling. But it's also something that we're paying attention to, and it reemphasizes the importance of the work that we do. Have you had, Johann, many conversations with folks about the potential for restrictive regulations in light of some of what we're seeing, persistent drought, and how do you kind of frame that up?

Johann Walker: Well, I like many of the things you already said. I mean, restrictive regulations are not something to panic about by any means. They will come and go. And in some ways, drought in the prairies can be a galvanizing force. This entire conservation effort that we've spent time talking about this morning was born out of the drought of the 1930s. It motivated folks. During the drought of the 1980s, the North American Waterfowl Management Plan, the North American Wetlands Conservation Act, it drew attention back to why it's so important to focus on those habitats. Because one thing we notice when the prairies dry up, is there's fewer ducks than we'd like. So there's an opportunity in there for those of us who really care about this for the long term, for our children, for our grandchildren, for generations to come, to see drought and restrictive regulations as an opportunity to do more and to focus attention. The other thing is, just like we talked about earlier, restrictive regulations come and go, liberal regulations will also be back at some point if they do go away. And right now, I think you were telling me, we're probably a ways from having to engage that conversation super seriously right now. But we could be headed in a direction where after a few more years of these kinds of conditions, we'd see that. I want to emphasize that What's most important here is that not only, like you said earlier, we're going through amazing technological change everywhere we look. Agriculture, our landscapes, the things we're demanding of them, no exception, right? We want food, we want fuel, we want fiber out of these landscapes, we want abundant duck populations, we've got thousands of private landowner stakeholders to work with. We need help to make sure that we can put economic incentives in front of them that help them keep habitat on the ground with us and make that sensible, make that a good decision for them that, hey, I want to keep those wetlands around because they help me diversify my income and get to the places I want to go to. And we continue to be able to see ducks when it gets wet out here.

Mike Brasher: You and I have said it before. I've heard Adam say it. I've heard other leaders in our organization say it. Conservation is a long game. And it's not a game that we walk away from. It's something that we remain committed to and we will have to remain committed to for the remainder of our careers and in the careers of multiple generations that come after us. Because one of the things that our investments in science tell us And this is one of the reasons why a sustained investment in science is so important. We talked about this yesterday. Things will change. Habitat on the landscape will change. Environmental conditions in space and time will change. They'll change over the short term. They'll change over the long term. It's important for us as an organization and as an entire waterfowl community to remain committed to the investments in science and research that allow us to stay in tune with those changes, quantify those changes, and then try to figure out what is the best way to adapt our conservation programs in light of those changes. And so change is the one thing that is going to happen, and that's why we have to remain committed to everything that we do. Notably, or most importantly, constant learning and constant monitoring of what's happening with these populations and habitats. And I know that's right up your alley too, right?

Johann Walker: Yeah, I can hardly add anything to that soliloquy there, Mike. I mean, I think that is exactly right. And I love the word adapt in this context. Just like ducks adapt to dry conditions, we have to be there to adapt to the way the world is changing, the way society is changing, your earlier point about understanding that human relationships are at the core of what we do. is kind of something that I wish had dawned on me earlier in my career. But we definitely are going to be here for the long haul. Ducks Unlimited has been in the prairies since the 1930s. That was a while ago, right? For either one of us. That's correct. And we will hand this off. I'm getting to be far enough along in my career to see that there's a need. I hope there are people listening to this podcast who are thinking, maybe I'll work on conservation in the prairies someday. But it's so important. is the bottom line, that we stay here, that we keep learning, that we do the science, that we apply it to the conservation, and that folks know we care about this landscape.

Mike Brasher: This podcast gives us an opportunity, gives us a particularly useful platform to have these more extended conversations, thoughtful conversations for the people, like you said, that may be listening to this thinking, hmm, that's something that I might want to do for a career. And I've had people reach out to me asking about that, that have learned of certain topics and hear about what we do through this platform and others. And I think that's a wonderful thing. I appreciate your willingness to join us and help share this message on this platform and others that Ducks Unlimited and all of our partners have. We are in this era of information, and we have a responsibility to put some information out there that provides context, provides a useful view of what's happening, and inspires people to get involved in one way or another. Johann, thanks for your hospitality here at the office this week. Thanks for the invitation to go out to the DU banquet here at Mandan. That was a wonderful event in itself. And that is another part of Ducks Unlimited that helps this engine go. And thanks to all the volunteers and everybody that attends those banquets out there. So certainly encourage all that as well. It's been a great week. Thanks again for joining us here on this episode, Johan, and look forward to catching up. I think I'll probably see you next week. Chances are. So thanks, Johan. We'll talk to you later.

Johann Walker: Thank you, Mike.

Mike Brasher: A very special thanks to our guest on today's episode, Dr. Johann Walker, the Director of Operations here in the Great Plains region. We always appreciate him taking time to sit down and give us an update from the prairies. We thank our producer, Chris Isaac, for the terrific job he does with these episodes and getting them to you. And then to you, the listener, we thank you for your time. We thank you for your support and commitment to wetlands and waterfowl conservation.