Ducks Unlimited Podcast

Mike Brasher: Hey, everybody. Welcome back. I am Dr. Mike Brasher. I'm gonna be your host on this episode, and it is springtime, and y'all know what that means.

Mike Brasher: Hit it, Chris.

Mike Brasher: Joining us from the prairies, our good friend, Dr. Scott Stevens. His actual title is not fresh in the front of my mind right now, so I'm going to skip over it. Folks know Scott. He's been on with us a lot of times. He worked up in the prairies and does some boreal conservation work for us as well. Scott, it is great to have you back.

Scott Stephens: It's good to be back. Always good to be here with you guys.

Mike Brasher: Now you are joining remote. So just, just to be clear, we weren't able to kind of get you down here, um, in person. It's been a while since I guess we've, we've seen one another. You've been out doing some things. I've been out doing some things and we've been busy. We've been trying to shoot a few, uh, well, I've been trying to shoot turkeys. Have you been turkey hunting? Do you do that?

Scott Stephens: I am fixing to go turkey hunting tomorrow.

Mike Brasher: You're fixing to go. Well, I reckon that I'm going to wish you success in that regard. I believe our good friend, Dr. Steve Adair, is also out chasing the gobblers, or he's headed that way, right?

Scott Stephens: I happen to be connecting with him.

Mike Brasher: Oh, is that right? Okay. He's going to get there before you and shoot the turkeys before you get to him? Or are you all going to be meeting about the same time?

Scott Stephens: We'll meet about the same time, but we'll see who shoots turkeys and who doesn't. Okay.

Mike Brasher: Well, good luck to y'all. Where are you headed? Is it Montana, Western South Dakota?

Scott Stephens: Well, you know, Mike, there's a meme that I saw a while back that it was about fishing from Bill Dance.

Mike Brasher: You're not going to tell me.

Scott Stephens: It said, there are two rules in fishing. Number one, don't give out to all the information. And the second one doesn't matter. No, there was no number two.

Mike Brasher: Okay.

Mike Brasher: Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. You're going to be somewhere in North America.

Scott Stephens: No, we're going to be in Montana.

Mike Brasher: Okay. Montana. All right. Well, good luck with that. We're not here to talk about turkeys. We're here to talk about the prairies and specifically what you are seeing, what you are hearing regarding habitat conditions up there in the U.S. and Canadian prairies because ducks are returning. I've already heard some reports of birds getting back and starting to settle across the landscape. I think it's probably going to be another pretty early spring. And so tell us what you've seen. I guess the first thing, let's kind of maybe a little bit of a preamble here. There's a number of maps that people can access to index precipitation that is accumulated over a certain time period. You can compare it to historical averages and so forth. You and I were talking before we got on here in that this year, it seems in particular, there's a great deal of variation, a lot of difference in what these different maps will show you. You shared one with me that shows essentially all of the prairies below their average precipitation over the period October through March. I pulled up one from the Canadian Wildlife Service, which actually shows some of those prairies in a surplus relative to the average. I don't know what's going on with the pretty dramatic discrepancies there. So I would just urge people to any of these maps that you see out there on the web or wherever else, kind of be a little more skeptical of what they might be showing, maybe more so than normal, especially if they tend to be painting a picture that is pretty rosy from a precipitation and moisture standpoint there on the prairies. Is that a fair statement, Scott?

Scott Stephens: It is. If we want to be totally transparent, we could talk about how internally we had some disagreement over our own habitat conditions report that came out not too long ago. Not all of us were sure it accurately reflected what we're seeing on the ground.

Mike Brasher: Yeah, and those things are pulled from data sets that are out there and curated. And sometimes they, any map that is out there that's derived from remotely sensed data of one type or another, it's probably going to be a little different from what your personal observations will be for, you know, some small area here or there. But it seems like this year, for whatever reason, there's some pretty dramatic differences from one dataset to the next, and whenever those get rolled up, yeah, into the product, like what you're talking about, sometimes that leads to some head scratching, and that was the case. What I'm going to ask you here to start off is like, what are you seeing? What are your eyeballs tell you? What are the eyeballs of other people that you've spoken with across the prairies tell you about current conditions and what are ducks encountering as they're already starting to arrive back in the prairies?

Scott Stephens: Yeah, well, to do that, I would probably back up to the fall and the winter, right? I think we've talked about some of these observations before, but I was back in southern Manitoba in duck breeding habitat in early November. And, you know, we spent plenty of time talking about how the fall was warm, you know, the onset of freeze up was late. But when I was there in early November, you know, it was so dry and dusty that I had to slow down to follow my friend as we were trekking around to hunt because, you know, the amount of dust was just unbelievable and I couldn't see if I tried to stay right on his tail. So, you know, that tells us in places like that soil moisture was, you know, almost non-existent. There was very little moisture in the soil. And, you know, we talk about the fact that then when things freeze, you know, in those conditions, even if we get a ton of snow, Most of it's going to sort of absorb into the soil and get soaked up like a sponge. So we won't have much water running off and ending up in wetlands. So that was sort of the stage in the fall. I know here where I was in western South Dakota, it was super warm even through Christmas, like in the 60s. So there was very little snowfall. We got a little snowfall later. But it didn't stick around long, and we warmed back up. So in late January, I was hunting eastern South Dakota for pheasants and was struck by how few wetlands actually contained water. Many of those were dry in eastern South Dakota, so wetland conditions were pretty poor. And, you know, throughout the winter we did not get a ton of snow. You know, we've looked at a number of those maps. You and I both get a map from Environment and Climate Change Canada. Not a ton of snow fell up there. There was maybe some late snow in Saskatchewan that may have been a little bit better, but You know, overall, I would say the reports that I've heard and conditions that I've seen would suggest that we will likely have similar wetland conditions or poorer to what we had last spring, unless we get an unbelievable amount of precipitation. And at this point in time, you know… We're running out.

Mike Brasher: We're running out of time.

Scott Stephens: Yeah, even April 14th is when we're talking here. you know it will likely come as rain it could come as snow but it will likely come as rain and you know we would need you know five six seven inches to to run and end up in wetlands and change things so you know my prediction i was writing a report for other purposes you know i said hey keep in mind we're going to have likely a smaller population of ducks returning to conditions that are similar or poorer to what they were in the spring of 24. So, you know, unfortunately, that's not super good news for anybody who cares about duck populations.

Mike Brasher: Yeah, so there's a lot to unpack in what you said. Before we got on the call, you were telling me, or started recording, you were telling me that you did go pheasant hunting, and I asked you what different areas had you visited, and you told me of one area, and you said there were wasn't a lot of water in the potholes. There were pheasants in the potholes. And we prefer for those prairie wetlands to serve as duck habitat, not necessarily pheasant habitat down in the center of them. It's OK. They can have the cattails on the edges, that type of stuff, right? They need those. But yeah, we need those things to be filled with water. There are some drought maps that folks can look at that will show I guess, moderate to maybe severe drought across much of South Dakota and maybe Western North Dakota, if I remember correctly. I think the one I'm thinking about is about a month old, so what the latest looks like, I don't know. As you said, the date we're recording this, the prior few days, there was some rain that came across the Dakotas. Again, it's going to take more of that. The other map that you referenced, again, in case people saw it or happened to find it, that showed, I think it's, what is it, snow water equivalent is what they call it?

Scott Stephens: Snow water equivalent. So it's, the idea is if you took the amount of snow, like let's say six inches of snow and you kind of boiled it and melted it, how much water would you end up with, right? Which usually, you know, it's like six or seven inches of snow translates into maybe an inch of water. So, that's what that's getting at. And the interesting thing is, especially late in the winter, it showed what looked like some better conditions, but then… Yeah, bright blue.

Mike Brasher: You know, you see bright blue, that means, hey, that's good.

Scott Stephens: Yeah, but then there was a little footnote that said, the model continues to overpredict in central Saskatchewan and these areas. So I wrote to the author and said, so if that were corrected, what do you think actual conditions are like? And his response was similar to what the rest of the map shows, which was not very good.

Mike Brasher: I wonder if those overestimations from the model are what are also showing up in that above average precipitation map that I was talking about. It almost has to be, because it aligns closely with the overpredicted areas from that snow water equivalent map. Again, like you, I don't know why you don't, if you know it's overestimating, I don't know why you wouldn't try to correct that somehow. You know it's overestimating. So fix it, dear Liza, fix it. Anyway, maybe if somebody from CWS or ECCC is listening, they can act on that and kind of get those things a bit more accurate kind of going forward. There's always things to be improved upon, just to be clear.

Scott Stephens: This is where I could sound like an old guy and say, I'm glad we still have people who can go out in the field and we don't just do everything by remote and through AI to interpret it for us.

Mike Brasher: That's right, for sure. So, now, you also said something about you anticipate a smaller breeding population to be returning to that landscape. Now, do you anticipate the BPOP, when results come out later this fall, to be overall smaller than last year? You do?

Scott Stephens: Yes. We expected it to be smaller last year, right? And it wasn't.

Mike Brasher: You did. You did. And this is probably the time where we have to make our wager, right? Make predictions, yeah. Well, we don't bet on this to be to be also just that's right.

Scott Stephens: There's yeah, we are not fan duel or anything like that.

Mike Brasher: I think I have kind of already sort of cast my lot in terms of what I think it's going to be the overall beep. I think it's going to be similar or I think it's going to be similar to last year, maybe down 5% on kind of the max.

Scott Stephens: So is that for you? Yeah, that's where I am too. And I'm talking about total ducks, right? I pulled some stats recently for some summaries of a number of species and all of the prairie dabbling species that primarily breed in the prairies, they are down anywhere from 35 to 50% from their peak 10 years ago. 2015, you know, 2017. Yeah, 2014 to 2017 was kind of the peak, the last peak in populations. So, you know, we're down, let's say round numbers, 40%. So, you know, folks out there who are like, hey, I'm not seeing as many ducks, it's like, yep, that makes sense. There are not as many ducks out there. So, you know, given the fact that We know conditions weren't stellar last year and we think production was probably average to below average. I would expect there to be a small decline in the population this year that we see in the spring. We know that when we do these counts, we estimate these, right? We use all the best statistics that we can. And, you know, but there's still a kind of margin of error. So, you know, even the increase that we showed last year, you know, the actual true information could have been the same or slightly lower, but within that standard error, margin of error kind of of the estimate. So I would expect that we would see a smaller breeding population of total ducks, given what I've seen for conditions.

Mike Brasher: Yeah, and so we are probably only two or three weeks out from those surveys getting underway. You know, we've had a number of people… We hope. Yeah, so just what I was going to say, we've had a number of people kind of asking us, are the surveys going to happen this year? Just because of the uncertainty in sort of the changes that are being made and, you know, this is not news to anyone. Federal employees have been given some early retirement options, and we know some colleagues that have taken those. And so there had been some concern of whether this is going to impair the service's ability to conduct the survey this year. As far as we know, the last I heard, which admittedly was a couple of weeks ago, they were still preparing. Everything was proceeding. I think there were still a few hurdles to overcome. I think there are always a few hurdles to overcome here or there. But I have not heard anything to suggest that they aren't going to conduct the survey now. I could get some notification tomorrow where something has come up and they're not able to do some aspect of it. Any of that type of stuff is always possible. But at this point, I do, I'm sort of in the position of expecting the survey to happen and we will, I guess, let people know if we learn something different. You haven't heard anything to the contrary, have you, Scott?

Scott Stephens: I have not. You know, I think. You know, even if we were going to adapt the survey, you know, there's been some discussion about that. You know, is there a better way to do this, a more efficient way to do this? Even if you do that, the hope would be that you would continue the traditional survey and overlap that with, you know, the new method for a number of years so you could develop a correction factor, kind of like we talked about for that snow model, right? So, yeah, no, I have not heard word that things are not going to happen. I know some of the concern that was shared was that, you know, obviously it's experienced people who are piloting planes and doing the aerial portion, but it's some of the more junior staff who tend to do the companion surveys on the ground. There was concerns that, you know, there were a bunch of those early career folks who were in that probationary period who, you know, were let go earlier this spring and, you know, what that means for the capacity to do those portions that are, you know, just as important to correct the error surveys to the ground surveys. I don't know, but you know, there has been concern. You know, this is an important survey that's really critical data that allows us to do a bunch of things that have to be done in order to set seasons and allow a duck season, and so we'll definitely be paying attention to that carefully.

Mike Brasher: Scott, there's one more thing that I want to say about that, but I want to take a break first, and then whenever we come back, We can kind of pick back up on this theme. I know there's an article out there right now that's kind of speaking about some of the concerns around the future of the ability to conduct some of these surveys. I think we'd be remiss if we didn't kind of offer a few thoughts there as well. But then we also want to talk about maybe some other… What do we know about the boreal forest and how are conditions there? What do we know about precipitation? So we'll be right back with those discussions, maybe a few more. So stay with us, folks. We'll be back after just a moment. Everybody, welcome back. We are here with Dr. Scott Stevens, kind of giving an update on habitat conditions up in the prairies and boreal. But before the break, we had talked about some of the concern that folks are expressing about the survey, both near-term and long-term. As we said before, we do expect at this point in time that the survey is going to be conducted this year. But there are also legitimate concerns about the future of the survey, the future of the migratory bird program and its ability to carry out all of its responsibilities with the same type of intensity and rigor that they have in the past. And those types of things are not necessarily new. Within sort of the waterfowl management community, We have had our eye on some of these issues for quite a number of years. Over the past five, if not 10 years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Migratory Bird Program has been essentially experiencing the sort of declining budgets, either as a result of of just reductions in their budget or stagnant budgets through time. Both of those will reduce the ability to kind of carry out duties and perform certain things that we like to see those folks doing, all in the interest of managing migratory bird populations in the U.S. sort of large-scale, those kind of concerns are not new. There have been some, obviously, some heightened concerns here in recent months, and there's an article out there circulating right now that speaks to some of those. So those issues do exist, and Scott, I think what we would also say is that our partners in that regard have been and will continue to look for ways to continue doing that critical work, maybe through alternative, more efficient means. Right.

Scott Stephens: Yeah, I think so. I mean, you know, some of the discussions are, you know, we started this survey, what, in the 50s? So, since that point in time, you know, fast forward 70 years, we've had lots of technological advances. Like right now, you know, our ability to remotely sense water on the landscape is dramatically different. So, you know, there have been questions about, is there a way to get you know, a better proxy to the pond count that we get from the survey data. Now, I'm not sure we have the ability to remotely sense ducks as well as we do ponds, but, you know, all those things beg the question, is there a better way to improve the information, make it less costly, make it more efficient, and still allow us to make smart resource management decisions?

Mike Brasher: And we have had conversations and will continue to have conversations with our federal partners, our state partners, about some of these changes, some of the changes that we know are happening, some of the changes that we may anticipate are happening, some of the reductions in the federal workforce that we're all kind of hearing about. And so we will be involved in those discussions and we will help out where we can. And that help may take on many different forms, but just wanted to touch on that because I know it's a topic that is front of mind for a lot of people right now because of what they're seeing in the media, also because of what is sort of happening, I guess, time-wise with the surveys right about to happen. So, didn't want to miss the opportunity to provide a little bit of context from our perspective. Yeah.

Scott Stephens: Pilots should be in the air in two weeks.

Mike Brasher: Yeah, that's right. That's right. And like I said, if something changes and that doesn't happen, we will do what we can to update you on that and keep you in the loop. Right.

Scott Stephens: Yep.

Mike Brasher: Scott, let's talk about the boreal forest. I think it was two years ago we were in like very extreme drought, had record wildfires. Last year, conditions improved a little bit. We obviously had a big overflight of ducks into the boreal forest last year. And so, but I don't, I think maybe habitat conditions across that boreal forest were sort of variable. They were improved over the prior year, but still largely variable. Do you have a read on kind of how things have played out over the past several months? Are we getting back to a situation where we've got sort of more stable, sort of better wetland conditions?

Scott Stephens: Yeah, in the northern forest, I mean, you know, unfortunately, I don't get to trek around that landscape as is true for most people but when you look at the remote sensing products like we talked about earlier for the prairies those that cover that geography generally say yeah we haven't had tons of wildfires and those kind of things popping up yet it's a little early but i think precipitation was generally you know a little behind normal but maybe not a dramatic amount but that system is generally more stable more stable water and that's maybe something that we should talk about, you know, as the contrast, you know, most of those wetlands do not go dry and kind of, you know, dry out. And then when they get wet again, sort of bloom with productivity like the wetlands and the prairies do. So it's a different system, more stable water, but that's part of the reason why, you know, in general, it's a little less productive when wet than prairie areas are for us.

Mike Brasher: So what about Alaska? You know, you do some work, I guess, you're kind of connected to that area as well. Any read on that? That was an area that over the past two years had seen some dramatic swings in breeding population levels. Any read on what's happening habitat condition-wise there?

Scott Stephens: Yeah, a little bit. I mean, Alaska is a place that I've been working with the team in the Western Regional Office. It's a place that we've decided, you know, it makes sense that we need to have a greater presence. So I've been talking with partners, state and federal partners across Alaska, trying to think about how you know, what role is appropriate for us to play? How can we engage and bring value added to that system? But you're right, one of the things that we've looked at is the breeding survey data, and those increased, you know, increased from the 70s into like the 90s, early 2000s, and they've begun to decline again. So there's concern about that, probably related to you know, warming of the climate up there. We know that some of those northern areas in Alaska and the Canadian boreal have warmed more than any other part of the globe. But we don't understand what's going on. So I know we were in Alaska for some meetings associated with that this winter, like in February. There was almost no snow in Anchorage when we got there. So they had been warmer and had less precipitation, I think. you know, they are expecting a challenging wildfire season up there. So, you know, again, conditions are variable and the boreal in Alaska is a big place, but yeah, there are areas that are dry and we would expect to see some of those challenges.

Mike Brasher: So Scott, it feels like we're in this period of time where things are going to be fluctuating very closely around that average. We might have some years where we bump up a little bit. But then now that we've kind of gotten to a point where the prairies are generally dry, there are some pockets of good conditions given that vast landscape. But overall, they're generally dry. Now we're at this lower population level and we're probably just going to fluctuate around that until we see a significant change in the prairies. Even once the boreal, if you would have told me that the report from the boreal was rosy and yes, we had abundant precipitation. I don't think that would have fundamentally changed our anticipation for productivity this fall. Same thing with Alaska. We're in this time period where until the prairies get widely wet and stay wet for a couple or three years, we're going to be fluctuating around this average.

Scott Stephens: Yeah, you've looked at these numbers too, Mike, but the real increases in populations that we see continentally for ducks, those happen when the prairies get wet. Those other systems have fluctuations, it's just the magnitude of that would be hard to pick up compared to the fluctuations in the prairies. I think you're exactly right. You know, when we talk about these things, you know, people are looking for the sign that we're turning the corner and we're coming back to a wet period. And when that happens, it's usually pretty obvious. You know, what the descriptor that I would give is, you know, 2011 is the time that sticks in my mind, the winter of. 2010-2011 where you know going in we had tons of snow you know there are stories about deer populations dying back because conditions are so tough and there was predictions for widespread flooding because of all the water that was going to run on the landscape across you know the Dakotas and and the Prairie Canada and Saskatchewan and Manitoba and that's what happened and that sort of you know from that 2011 period we had the latest spike in populations We don't see the signs for that yet. That hasn't shaped up, you know, in the winter of 24-25, but it will eventually happen and, you know, then I would say we would expect to see populations recover. Now, one of the challenges that we have talked about is we've seen a lot of habitat loss since 2011 and the question is whether the response from the birds is as strong and we'll see as as much of a bump in populations as we've seen in the past, that's our concern. But those conditions will turn eventually and we will see wetness return.

Mike Brasher: Well, until then, I guess we'll continue to report on these kind of average conditions. And again, it emphasizes the importance of conserving duck production landscapes across a large, large scale so that we can have this conversation and say, okay, the prairies are dry, but we still have a vast boreal landscape. We have the river deltas up in Alaska. We have other areas in Eastern Canada and other areas that are important for breeding waterfowl, breeding ducks. that where these birds can go and try to crank out a brood. They're not going to be as productive as if they would be when the prairies are wet, but they'll still maintain a population, a huntable population. We'll get out there and we'll get after them and we'll continue to support conservation and we'll continue to conserve those and protect those wetlands and grasslands in the prairie so that once that rain does return, hopefully the ducks will do their thing. And like you said, we're all going to be looking forward to that. That is the big question. What is that response whenever the prairies do get wet again? And we'll be here, hopefully, to report on it. So Scott, we wish you luck here over the next few days as you go chase the land-dwelling birds, those turkeys. So, and say hey to our mutual friends. Y'all have a good time. Stay out of trouble and we'll catch you, oh, I don't know, here in a couple of months, we'll get a mid-summer report or late spring report. And hopefully, we'll have received some good rainfall by then. Any final words?

Scott Stephens: No, it sounds good. We look forward to seeing the survey results and seeing what populations do here. But yeah, conditions are not bright and rosy right now, unfortunately.

Mike Brasher: And as you always say, life is short, you better hunt. That continues and applies even in the spring when we're chasing them turkeys. That's right. That's true. Thank you, Scott. A very special thanks to our guest on today's episode, Dr. Scott Stevens. We always appreciate the insight he brings to us. A thank you to our producers here in studio, Chris Isaac and Rachel Bennett, for all the wonderful work they do. And then to you, the listener, we thank you for your time and spending it with us. And we thank you for your support of wetlands and waterfowl conservation. And go find a Ducks Unlimited event near you at www.ducks.org forward slash events.