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Ducks Unlimited Podcast is a constant discussion of all things waterfowl; from in-depth hunting tips and tactics, to waterfowl biology, research, science, and habitat updates. The DU Podcast is the go-to resource for waterfowl hunters and conservationists. Ducks Unlimited is the world's leader in wetlands conservation.
Mike Brasher: Hey, everybody. Welcome back. I am Dr. Mike Brasher. I'm your host on this episode, and it's another special episode. We've got some good timely reports. It's mid-August, August 13th, specifically when we are recording this, and we're all getting antsy. The big report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is going to be coming out in a matter of days. and so we will have a ton of content to bring to you at that point, but today we have two other topics that are very relevant and timely, one of which relates to a situation ongoing out in the western U.S., the Klamath Basin specifically, an ongoing avian botulism outbreak. We're going to have a report from Jeff McCreary, our Director of Operations, to tell us what is happening and what Ducks Unlimited's involvement is going to be there or is around that issue. But also, and the original reason for scheduling this episode amongst our guests here, was to discuss some of the results recently released from various state agency surveys of breeding waterfowl this spring. So, really, two topics that we're going to be covering here, and we've got a number of people you're going to be hearing from. In studio with me is Nathan Ratchford, our conservation communications coordinator. Second time you've been on. Nathan, great to have you back.
Nathan Ratchford: Yeah, thanks, Mike. Feels like Christmas this time of year, doesn't it?
Mike Brasher: Pretty close to it, except the weather. It's not Christmas weather. We'll get there. However, it's been cool the past couple of days. I'm happy about that here in Memphis, surprisingly. A brief reprieve. Yeah. I saw an eight-point buck in velvet in our backyard about 125 yards out this morning. So, you know, it's You're starting to think about those things. And joining us remotely from different parts of the country, this is sort of the power of technology and the strength of Ducks Unlimited and our science staff and conservation staff as we can bring these people in, from the Great Lakes and Atlantic Regional Office, Dr. John Coluccy, our Director of Conservation Science and Planning. John, welcome back. You're second time on now.
John Coluccy: Yeah, you got me hooked. A couple visits down in short succession here, Mike. Thanks for having me, Bill.
Mike Brasher: Appreciate it. Yeah, that's right. We set the hook and now we got you on the line and we're going to keep reeling in, uh, let you go, let you catch and release and then we'll catch you again. That's all right. Sounds good. Uh, and then first time guest, uh, is joining us from out in California. Dr. Dan Smith, Dan. Great to have you joining us here today.
Dan Smith: Thanks, Mike. Appreciate it.
Mike Brasher: Dan is relatively new to Ducks Unlimited. Dan, we'll give you an opportunity sometime later on to give a more detailed sort of introduction recap of who you are. We've got some real good topics we want to get right into, but people will be hearing more from you as we go forward on this, on the podcast, as well as some other platforms. But each of you guys are sort of in the seat of our science and conservation planning in your respective regions. Dan, you out in the western region. John, you in the Great Lakes and Atlantic. So thank you for being here. Got a lot of material to cover. The first that we want to do is go to an interview that I conducted just a little while ago with Jeff McCreary, our Director of Operations from Ducks Unlimited Western Region. He's running point on this issue of avian botulism outbreak in Klamath Basin. And he, he checked in with us to give us a quick update. And so right now we are going to roll that tape and get an update from Jeff. So Chris, go ahead. So we are here with Jeff McCreary, our Director of Operations out in Ducks Unlimited's Western region. And Jeff, we appreciate you jumping on here with us. The things that we can do with modern technology now, we're going to talk to you about something that's real pressing and current out in your region, the Klamath region, Klamath Basin. A lot of folks have probably heard about this by now, and it is an ongoing outbreak of avian botulism there on a couple of the refuges. And you are sort of spearheading our response and a lot of our efforts in engaging in that effort. And so give us an update, Jeff, give our audience an update on the situation and what Ducks Unlimited's involvement is.
Jeff McCreary: Yeah, Mike, thanks for having me. It's an important issue. It's something that DU needs to be involved in, DU needs to get ahead of. as much as we can, but maybe some context would be important for the folks who are not too familiar with the Klamath and maybe you've heard about it, but you don't really know why this is a big deal. So the Klamath Basin is in Northern California and Southern Oregon, just kind of northeast of Mount Shasta. It's high elevation desert. It's a landscape that was once dominated by 300,000 acres of wetlands. Most of those have been drained and converted for agricultural use, but Two really important wetland areas still exist up there that are important for waterfowl. Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge, which was the nation's first waterfowl-specific national wildlife refuge. Not the first, but the first waterfowl-specific that Teddy Roosevelt created in 1905, and Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge, its sister, is just to the east of Lower Klamath, and collectively those two refuges might arguably be the most important wildlife refuges in North America for waterfowl. Tule Lake, for example, in the 1950s had three million pintails on one 9,000-acre unit. And well, I don't think there's three million pintails alive in maybe the planet today. And so that's how important these areas are. Birds, the pintails that are alive, they use the Pacific Flyway, use the Klamath, and they stop there on their northern spring migration. And from there, they fly 2,000 miles, sometimes over the open ocean, to western Alaska, to the YK Delta, where they nest. And a hen might lay nine eggs and turn around and bring those birds back in the fall to the Central Valley. So Klamath is this kind of neck of the hourglass in a lot of ways for the Pacific Flyway, so it's super important. The challenges, of course, is Klamath is well known for the water wars and the water challenges about how to allocate water to competing needs. The refuge is certainly one of those needs, but agriculture, endangered fish, and lakes and rivers are also competing for the same amount of water. The downside is the refuges are last and lowest on the priority list, so they suffer the most consequences of western drought or changes in water allocation. They're lowest on the list. What we're seeing this year, particularly in Tule Lake and a little bit in lower Klamath, is a botulism outbreak. Botulism is a naturally occurring bacteria. It's in canned food. If your canned food goes bad, you get botulism in there. So it exists. It's not a special thing. But what is special about it is that it really loves hot, stagnant water. And that's high elevation desert, Klamath Basin. You have low water levels. You have hot temperatures. and that is ripe for creating conditions for botulism. And right now we're seeing an outbreak happen in Thule Lake.
Mike Brasher: Now, Jeff, this situation that we've got this year, botulism is not new to the Klamath Basin. Periodically, it rears its ugly head. There are various other locations across North America that are known for having periodic botulism outbreaks. So this isn't like a… It's not something that is unknown to the waterfowl community, but in this particular situation, it's a little… There are a few other circumstances around this that make it a bit heightened in terms of concern and some of the work that we're doing. Folks from that region and others that maybe have listened to the podcast in the past will know that For a couple of years now, those two refuges have had virtually no water on them. They've been dry and have not been able to support large concentrations or really any waterfowl. And over the past couple of years, I think, earlier this year, though, And I don't know the circumstances around it, maybe you can fill that in. There was an arrangement made to have some water released to those refuges for the first time in a couple of years and everyone was excited. And we were like, what is the bird response going to be? Everyone was, this was like late winter, early spring. And I think a lot of people anticipated birds would respond, they would go there in large numbers. And I think from what I've heard, that was indeed the case, but now kind of find ourselves in a situation where the water was turned off or the water supplies being introduced to that, I guess, were shut off for whatever reason. And now we've not had any additional water supplies over the summer. It's drying up. And so we have this botulism outbreak that is occurring already and I think in one location. And I mean, so kind of expand on that, the nature of this from your perspective, when you see that happening, you went from excited about water And being familiar with that landscape, you had to know this was going to be a possibility, right? That if we did not get some water coming in throughout the summer, this was going to happen, right? That's right. Yeah.
Jeff McCreary: It's so bizarre. The clam is sometimes you think you're going one direction and they end up going a totally different direction. Yeah. So this spring… some amazing things happened. Refuges that have been dry for years, Thule Lake, I mean, bone dry, nothing out there, moonscape, and it filled up completely. In fact, it filled up so much that we worked with the Thule Lake Irrigation District to pump water to turn on the big deep plant pump and pump water over to Lower Klamath. And Lower Klamath had more water on it than it's had in, I don't know, I can't even tell you how much, how long it's been for some of these units. And, you know, I was up there in April and driving to some medians and driving past lower Klamath and it was incredible. There were so many pairs out there, pairs of birds, you know, and interestingly, there were a lot of redhead pairs out there. And redheads have been the number four bird being banded this year. And just really remarkable, the number of diving birds, diving ducks that have gone up there this year. So what happened was we had a situation where the dams are coming out of the Klamath River. They had to lower the amount of flows that go down to the river to help the dam. So they put that water out onto the wildlife refuges. So Tule Lake was full up. Lower Klamath was fuller than it's been in a long time. So amazing habitat, amazing water, great spring conditions. You knew birds were just gonna be responding, and they did. They're out there banding ducks right now. They've been doing 1,000 ducks a day for the last several days. That just shows you how many birds are out there. But what that did is it created, unfortunately, a situation that we're in today. And I think it's no surprise for the water managers and the players that be up at the Clam Basin that this is happening. Because we knew there was only so much water later in the year. The snowpack was not a huge snowpack. So that late snow melt just was non-existent. And that we knew that late water a serious challenge, and they are. So you've got this perfect storm. You've got incredible habitat conditions. You've got loads of birds taking advantage of that. You've got water cut off. You've got hot temperatures. You've got a lot of evaporation. And you got this perfect condition for botulism to be rampant up there. You got a lot of young birds that haven't got their flight feathers yet. You got a lot of birds that are doing their molt migration, so birds will migrate from their breeding grounds to a molting ground. And Tule Lake and Lower Klamath are some of the most well-used molting grounds in this part of the flyway. and these birds are coming in there, and they're gonna be trapped and affected by this outbreak if we don't do something.
Mike Brasher: Jeff, I have spoken with a number of people from different backgrounds, and of course, you know I'm on social media a little bit, and I follow some of what people post and comment on our social media feeds, and people care about that region. They care about those refuges. They care about, and it's their, It's a passionate group of people that are just so frustrated and disappointed and sad and angry and whatever other kind of emotion you want to throw at it, you want to describe because of what they have seen happen to that landscape. There are conversations here about long-term issues, long-term solutions, but then there are conversations about what's happening now and people are frustrated and people are wanting to know what's going to happen, what can be done. So tell people, help people understand, what are we doing? What are our partners doing to try to find some short-term, near-term solutions to the outbreak that you're talking about right now?
Jeff McCreary: Yeah, I mean, great points, Mike. The climate is, I mean, Mark Twain said, you know, water's water for fighting over and whiskey's for drinking. And it's true in the West and it's very true in the Klamath Basin. There's politics. There's water politics that play big time with the power players in the basin. Tribal water rights that go back to time immemorial. You got irrigation rights that are senior to refuge water rights. You've got a system that was designed, ironically, to get rid of excess water that now is desperate for water. And the solutions that are out there, we think there are some, but they're embroiled in the political situation. emotional responses and getting angry and getting upset. And those are all valid. And those should be those should be drivers of working towards these solutions. But in and of themselves, they're not going to get the solution. We have to be doing a political solution, which means building compromise, building trust and building understanding. And that's what D.U.' 's been working on, a part of what we've been working on. There is a technical fix. You need to be able to move that water. So you need pumps, you need canals, you need water control structures. And we're doing all of those things, but those don't do much good if you don't have the water. The politics are that water flows, or go ahead.
Mike Brasher: Well, I was just going to kind of get to the political side of this. I want us to be able to share, I want us to be able to share with our listeners as much as possible. But I also know that for some of these things, we work behind the scenes. and we don't, we're not necessarily out front with every step of what we're doing, but I do want to use this opportunity to share what we can with our listeners because they care about it and they need to know that we care also and we are helping in ways that sometimes they don't know about. So what can you tell us given all the things, all the players, all the politics and sensitivities involved in this?
Jeff McCreary: Yeah, so we're engaged out front with our typical project work, but a lot of what I do Climate Basin is behind the scenes. It's all about the relationships that you have to find a political solution. And we're working on the long term fix, of course, that's our eyes on the prize. And we have to maintain that even when we're working on an acute crisis like we have today. It's all about the politics. It's about the relationships. It's building trust. And so we've built these relationships with the federal government. We've built relationships with the agricultural community. We've built relationships with our tribal partners. And that is the core, is bringing these groups together to find a compromise, to find something where we all win. and that the birds win at the same time. And so we're working on a deal behind the scenes. We're hoping it's gonna come through, but it's about getting water and it's about having the political players find that happy compromise point within the competing demands that they have for this water. I think nobody wants birds to be suffering. Nobody likes the fact that these refuges, which are iconic and institutions within that geography, nobody likes to see them suffering and nobody likes to see the birds suffering. But at the same time, people are trying to make a living, people are trying to hold on to their cultural values, and what happens is that these refuges often get caught in the pinch. But finding that multi-benefit solution where fish, where farms, where waterfowl can all benefit, that's the sweet spot. And we think that there's an opportunity here with this botulism outbreak, and we definitely think that there's a good opportunity for the long-term fix to help these refuges so we can avoid this situation in the future.
Mike Brasher: Jeff, any final words? Any other parties or groups that we need to kind of pay mention to that are helping us in this current situation? It's August 13th right now. I mean, we are It's like worry time out there. You're already seeing birds dying. You know the problem is going to get worse, succumbing to the botulism illness. It's going to become worse if we don't get water, some sort of near-term solution for that. But we'll keep an eye on that from our end. But before we close out here, I wanted to give you an opportunity to mention anything else partners were working with or other things that people need to be aware of.
Jeff McCreary: Yeah, some key things that we're doing is the California Waterfowl Association, CEO Jake Messerly and I got together and we said we need to do something that is synergistic, that makes our efforts individually become more powerful. And so we put a letter together to the Bureau of Reclamation and Department of Interior raising the profile of this issue within their decision-making about getting water to the refuges and saving these birds. And we submitted that letter yesterday to the Bureau of Reclamation. We've got to build these relationships with the agricultural community, with the Klamath Water Users Association, with the Fish and Wildlife Service, with the Klamath Tribes, the Yurok, the Karook Tribes. All of these partners need to come together and find this multi-beneficial solution. And we're working the phones and building and leveraging our relationships to make that happen. And of course, if you're passionate and you want to have a voice, there's lots of forums that are out there. You can connect with the Bureau of Reclamation. You can connect with the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Department of Interior and let your voices know that the refuges and birds are important.
Mike Brasher: And so, Jeff, on that point, is this one of those places where folks can contact their members of Congress to kind of let them know where their values are and what's important to them? I know there may not be a direct link to some of that, but is this one of those places where people can engage if they so choose?
Jeff McCreary: People can always engage, and I think the representatives that cover that area, it's Doug LaMalfa in California, and it's Representative Bents in Oregon. They're very interested in the Klamath Basin, and they're always interested in knowing what's going on and how they can help. Of course, money is always the key factor, because a lot of these things take money to solve. And so Congress holds the purse strings, and they need to know that climate is a priority.
Mike Brasher: Jeff, thank you so much for taking the time to update us on this. I know your schedule is jam-packed, partly with discussions around this very issue, so we greatly appreciate you taking time out and joining us here and giving us this update. Bigger picture, we thank you for everything that you do and your team does out there for wetlands and waterfowl conservation and keeping those areas going. They are among our highest priorities across the continent, and thanks for everything that y'all are doing out there.
Jeff McCreary: Well, thanks for having me on the show today, Mike. And I just really appreciate the Waterfowl community, DU membership. We can't do this work without all of you. It takes a community and the Waterfowl community is one of the best in the world.
Mike Brasher: Thanks, Jeff. All right, well, we certainly appreciate Jeff joining us and providing that update. We're going to move on now and talk about some information, data that came available within the past couple of months. It's data that was collected, however, a few months ago. And, of course, some of it relates to some of the things that Jeff talked about specific to that issue. And so these are state-led breeding waterfowl surveys. There's a number of states that conduct their own breeding waterfowl surveys every year. These are in addition to the much larger U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service-led Waterfowl Breeding Population and Habitat Survey, which covers places that are known as the traditional survey area and the eastern survey area. So that's the big survey. The results will be coming out soon, but there's a handful of states that do their own breeding population surveys and those results kind of trickle out sporadically over the summer. Nathan, this is the first time we've done sort of a roundup on these survey results that I can remember. We may have done something like this in the distant past, But this is the first for me to be involved in. Nathan, you kind of led this article. So, recap for us the states that we're going to be talking about and kind of lay out our thinking, what it is, the purpose of this article, and sharing this information with our audiences. Yeah, absolutely, Mike.
Nathan Ratchford: So, as you mentioned, several states across both the Pacific Flyway and some of the Great Lakes states conduct these independent surveys showing breeding populations within their respective states. In addition to that, there's also the Canadian province of British Columbia, which we don't have their results until a little bit later in August, but they're designed to give a fuller picture of what's going on in addition to that data gathered from the larger waterfowl breeding population habitat survey. So data from each of these states is collectively considered around AHM decisions, adaptive harvest management decisions, and specifically around two stocks of mallards. For the Pacific Flyway, those are western mallards, and for these Great Lakes states that we're going to be discussing are mid-continent mallards. So for Pacific Flyway states, we have California, Washington, Oregon, and as we mentioned, the Canadian province of British Columbia. For our Great Lakes states, it's Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan. Now these results are released at different periods throughout the spring. Some are very recent, Minnesota being the most recent. So, our goal with this roundup of articles is to provide additional education to our members at Ducks Unlimited on what the state survey's value is in management decisions, as well as giving us all an early glimpse on breeding breeding waterfowl conditions. And as I mentioned, like this time of year, it feels like Christmas just because the anticipation, right? We're not sure what's coming and the excitement starts to build. You know, we're trying to all get a glimpse of what the fall flight may look like, what conditions look like. So this roundup, it's been a collective effort from both Dan and John and our regional, respective regional offices at Ducks Unlimited, yourself, of course, as well as our state agencies and partners who really are the ones conducting these large efforts. It's been great working with them, building those relationships, speaking to them on the phone and seeing what things are looking like. as well as being able to shed some more light on these efforts that I think get a little bit unnoticed just in the shadow of the May survey, which gathers much attention from waterfowlers this time of year. In an effort to just add some more education around that, we've been working on this roundup, and it's available on ducks.org. If you search 2024 State Waterfowl Survey results, you'll see that come up right away.
Mike Brasher: So, Nathan, what was it like, and it's probably the first time you wrote an article like this, where you're pulling data from, I don't know, maybe, was it the first time you wrote an article like this?
Nathan Ratchford: On this scale, certainly. Okay.
Mike Brasher: So what was it like then working with a team of scientists and kind of technical folks reviewing and editing this and then sending back to you our nitpicky details and asking you to change this word to that word? What was that like?
Nathan Ratchford: It was definitely humbling and educational for me as the new conservation communications coordinator at Ducks Unlimited, which is a new position. Working closely with our conservation staff and looking at how they look at things and splitting hairs makes me better at my job. So working with our conservation staff here, as well as state agencies, has certainly been valuable for me. and seeing what type of decisions go around communicating these things, the nuances in the surveys, right? And a lot of these things we're going to be talking about today, but some of those migrating ducks that could be considered in that data and how that needs to be properly explained to our members and those reading the article concisely, right? That's always the challenge.
Mike Brasher: That's right. That is the difficult thing. The line we walk in terms of being sort of technically accurate on what the numbers are, but also doing it in a way that is useful and consumable to our audience. We even had conversations about, well, are we going to round these numbers up? Are we going to present them exactly as they are in the report? Do we need to be consistent across the different surveys? A number of things that we talked about, estimates and approximations. We went back and forth on a few words. Appreciate you taking those considerations and incorporating all that, and it is a—we do that, obviously, because there are some limitations to what can be drawn from the data.
Nathan Ratchford: Absolutely, and that standard of accuracy is exactly why people look to Ducks Unlimited for this education. and being a part of what goes on to meet that standard, it was just a reminder of exactly why I came on board at this organization to begin with.
Mike Brasher: And also, I would probably say most importantly, to respect the work of our partners that are conducting the surveys, that are collecting the data, and ensuring that we are not misrepresenting the data or how it should be interpreted. So there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes whenever we're pulling this stuff together and partnering on the development of these kind of articles. And so yeah, thank you for doing that. John, I'm going to go to you first. You've been with us for, is it two decades? Over two decades yet?
John Coluccy: Yeah, it was 23 years in May, so working on 24 years.
Mike Brasher: All right. So, you have worked with these data for many years, you're familiar with the surveys, you look at these surveys specifically from… I mean, you're familiar with all this data, whether we're talking the waterfowl breeding population habitat survey from the traditional survey area, eastern survey area, the state surveys, but especially the Great Lakes states that are conducting these surveys. How often do… Well, let me ask you this question, because someone came to me yesterday and asked this question, like, what do we take from one year's worth of data? When you're looking at these numbers, like, so I guess two questions. As a scientist, when you're looking at these numbers, what do we take from one year's worth of data? versus whenever you get asked a question by a hunter, and they're looking at one year's worth of data, what can they take from it? Are those two things the same? Are they different? Like, how do you… A little different.
John Coluccy: I mean, quite a bit different, actually, because as scientists, we like to put that data point, that singular data point, in the context of long-term data, and that's what's wonderful about these surveys. You know, the larger BPOP survey from the traditional survey area goes back to 1955. And I think, you know, between Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, they've been around since about, I think, the oldest one has been, I think, the 70s. So they're long-term data. So it's trend. And so I'm more interested in the trend. And, you know, so when we see a big positive jump in a single year, I kind of, I don't get too excited about it. If we see a series of progressive years where we've got increasing bee pop, that's good stuff. And that's when I get a little bit more excited about it. You know, the same thing with a downturn. You know, we start seeing these long-term declines and things like that. That signals that, you know, either something's going on with the bird ecology or something with the habitat. And so those are things that we kind of zoom in on a scientist and focus in on and try to answer questions of why those declines are happening over the long term. You know, we have a lot of examples of that. Mallards in the Great Lakes, Mallards in the Atlantic Flyway, Scop, Pintail, you know, go down the list. And so, you know, we divert a lot of attention To those species that have these continual long-term declines that try to unearth what the issues are and so Reduxa Unlimited is a habitat conservation organization. We want to know what we can do from our habitat program perspectives to, to address those declines. And that's what it's all about.
Mike Brasher: And so then from a hunter perspective, what's, what do you tell them? Who's, they want, they'll call you. I'm sure you get some calls or conversations like, I saw the numbers come out. What does that mean? What can, what do I need to prepare for in terms of the, the upcoming hunting season? What's that answer look like?
John Coluccy: Yeah, I mean, well, what, what, what every individual hunter sees in front of their blind each season is, is driven by lots of different things. BPOP is one of them. But you also have to have good production, right? And so right now we've got a lot of preseason banding going on out there. uh, catching a lot of birds. And so that age ratio that, uh, we get from those, uh, those banding programs in the preseason give us a sense of, of what production was like for the various species that, that nesting these, uh, these areas. And so that's, that's part of it too, is like, you know, the expectation of the fall flight. Bee pop is kind of the first part of it, but they also have to nest. They have to be successful. They've got to bring a brood off. They've got to be successful there too. And so there's a lot of, a lot of parts to go into that. And then you've got habitat conditions on top of it in your local area, regionally, nationally, weather patterns. I mean, yeah, it's very complex. But the first part is having a healthy bee pup. And so there is reason to be excited about that.
Mike Brasher: Dan, I want to ask you a question here. We're talking about results from state surveys. These are, I've mentioned this on a number of episodes before, it probably surprises some hunters in Arkansas or Alabama to learn that there's breeding mallards, several hundred thousand breeding mallards in California. Most people don't think of that. And so I want your perspective on the importance of these locally breeding ducks. The same type of question could be posed to John, and I suspect the answer is going to be very similar if I posed it to John regarding those three Great Lakes states, but from your area out west, the importance of these locally breeding populations of ducks.
Dan Smith: Yeah, so mallards in the West are certainly an important duck from a harvest standpoint. And so when we see state surveys on this bee pop come out, we can kind of get an idea of what's being grown in our backyard. And from the hunter's perspective, we tend to see that play a pretty important role early season in harvest success. Those birds tend to stay pretty local. That does vary pretty dramatically by state. California tends to have a pretty strong trend with our local breeding population and overall harvest success for the entire year. Whereas as you move north to Oregon and Washington you start to see those relationships weaken because they tend to see more migratory mallards enter as winter progresses and those migratory birds enter that system. And it's also a combination where you have these longer waterfowl seasons in the west that those local mallards, they get wise to hunting pressure pretty fast. So the ones that make it tend to know where to go to find refuge and all those things. Factors that John was referencing earlier, you know, what goes into predicting your hunting season and, you know, disturbance and refuges is a big one. So that's kind of what we see when we look at breeding numbers for mallards, particularly here in the West, is how likely are we to interact with those birds early season.
Mike Brasher: You know, Dan, I'm looking at this report. I'm actually looking at the article on ducks.org. And if I'm doing my quick math across the three states out there, California, Oregon, and Washington, we're looking at about 330,000, give or take, because my math isn't exact there. mallards, breeding mallards, and then we're also looking at probably close to 700,000 or 800,000 total breeding ducks across all the different species accounted for in these surveys. I mean, that's an appreciable number, right?
Dan Smith: Yeah, that's a significant number at that time of year, you know, especially if you think about If we have good production and those birds are able to hatch off a clutch successfully and make it through all those successive hurdles to actually fledge those birds, you can see a lot of production from that type of number.
Mike Brasher: And so we've got California, Oregon, Washington covered here in this article. There are surveys conducted. Does Nevada still do a breeding waterfowl survey? Do you know, Dan?
Dan Smith: I don't know if they do it. anymore, and if they do, I haven't seen data from it recently.
Mike Brasher: Okay, I know there used to be, at least used to be, data in that the waterfowl status report. I probably should know that right now, but the point is that there are other, point I was going to make, is there are other states, other regions out west where ducks breed and other ducks are produced, right? So these surveys are conducted There are standard protocols that each state develops. I'm not saying that each state uses the same protocol, but each state has their own protocol and estimation method, survey method that they use to estimate breeding duck populations within their state. They identify the important breeding areas in their state and they fly those and so these numbers represent an estimate from essentially the representative area. But there are other locations throughout the Intermountain West where you would find some ducks being produced that probably are not included in these surveys. Dan, are there areas that come to mind that are notable for duck production in the Intermountain West that wouldn't be captured by some of the, well, certainly the surveys we're going to talk about here, but just any other survey as far as you're aware?
Dan Smith: I wouldn't know about other surveys, but we have seen a lot of really fantastic waterfowl research focused on breeding birds in the West, including Colorado and Utah. I mean, these are really core areas that, you know, if a duck is there and it's wet in spring, they're going to try to nest sometimes. So, you know, we see a lot of simenteal, gadwall, and mallard. Those are kind of the traditional species we see. We also see a lot of other birds. I mean, the first banding operations that even took place on waterfowl happened on redheads in Great Salt Lake, and that was a huge area for redheads in the West. So we see a lot of nesting waterfowl in the West. It's just dispersed and in these little kind of pockets here and there.
Mike Brasher: Yeah, I had forgotten about Colorado. Is that the San Luis Valley in Colorado that is really well known, I believe?
Dan Smith: That's certainly one of them. Okay. Yeah. We also see, it seems that there's a decent amount of irrigated habitats that also support nesting mallards pretty much all throughout Colorado. And even in California, I'm always surprised, you know, we have our traditional kind of survey area, but if you go hiking in the Sierras, you'll see a lot of broods on really high Sierra lakes. So, waterfowl are very prolific.
Mike Brasher: John, I guess I want to pose that same question to you. Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, the three states that we have here, what do we know about locally breeding waterfowl in any of the other states in the Great Lakes region?
John Coluccy: Yeah, certainly we have other breeding waterfowl that occur, probably in much lower densities. When you think about Illinois, Northern Illinois, Northern Indiana, portions of northern Ohio still do produce mallards. There's breeding mallards there. About anywhere you have tree cavities and forested wetlands, you're going to have wood ducks. So, yeah, there's, you know, as you know, Mike and everybody on this call, that doing aerial surveys is pretty labor-intensive and costly, and so the long-standing surveys that we have in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan are, you know, we have higher densities there, and those are truly considered production states, while the others, when you look at the return on investment for recording a lower, you know, much lower densities of breeding waterfowl in some of these other states that I mentioned, it's just not worth the lift. But there are other Breeding surveys that happen that are more ground-based, breeding bird survey, and other things like that out there. But yeah, collectively, all of those other states do contribute to the breeding population, particularly for mallards and wood ducks, and a smattering of a few other ducks.
Mike Brasher: Yeah, John, I guess a point, it's always useful to reiterate once, twice, three times a year is that the numbers we get from this collection of surveys, whether we're talking the state surveys, the state surveys plus all the, plus the Fish and Wildlife, Canadian Wildlife Service surveys, those numbers do not represent a census, number one. It's not a total count. It's an estimation. There's measures of variation around those estimates. And they also, as we just talked about, do not cover all the areas where waterfowl breed. So it's not a complete estimate of the total North American population of ducks, really, of any species. You mentioned wood ducks, John. I don't think wood ducks are included in any of these state surveys, are they? They are recorded.
John Coluccy: Yeah, they are for sure in Wisconsin and Michigan, you do see them broken out. As our other species, they're not often reported out though, in terms of numbers. And with wood ducks, you think about the habitats those birds are in, and you're talking about an aerial survey and forested wetlands, so a lot of visibility bias associated with trying to record those buggers. I don't think we have a really good way at estimating or surveying, you know, green populations of wood ducks. And so, you know, I think you probably touched on Lincoln-Peterson estimators and things like that, maybe on some of your other shows, and that may offer an opportunity to monitor wood ducks without direct aerial surveys.
Mike Brasher: Nathan, do you have any questions about kind of the intro to these surveys or any of the logistics or protocols or anything that had been bugging you as you were going through reading the surveys, summarizing the information that you wanted to ask?
Nathan Ratchford: One question that I've seen pop up as a result of this is how, you know, their role in AHM. We haven't really talked about that.
Mike Brasher: You know what? Let's take a break. That'd be a great thing to come back to. We'll talk about their role in AHM, Adaptive Harvest Management, and then we will touch on some of the highlights of the survey. I think a lot of people are wanting to talk about that. So stay with us, folks. We will be right back with more information. Welcome back, everyone. I am here in studio with Nathan Ratchford, and joining us remote is Dr. Dan Smith from out in Sacramento, California, Rancho Cordova, I guess, to be exact. And then Dr. John Colusi from Michigan is… Man, what is the… Dexter, Michigan, right? Okay, just, you know, wanting to be accurate. So, when we left off, we were about to transition to how these data from these six states factor into adaptive harvest management. You want to take that, Nathan? You got questions for us.
Nathan Ratchford: Yeah, thanks, Mike. You know, I was curious about how these, you know, to clarify for a lot of hunters, how do these population estimates, how are they collectively considered? How are they valued by waterfowl managers and making decisions around bag limits in that AHM process.
Mike Brasher: Yeah, there's a lot rolled up into that, Nathan. I guess the bag limit thing I'll kind of set aside because that's a more sort of permanent fixture of sort of the regulatory options in adaptive harvest management. I think from the standpoint of understanding the role of the results from these state surveys in the adaptive harvest management protocols, I have to clarify one thing, I guess first, is that when you look at duck season frameworks, The Pacific Flyway is dictated by, and when I say duck season framework, I'm talking about days and daily bag limits. So those are kind of presented as a number of regulatory options or alternatives for a given year. When you look across the country, duck season frameworks in the Pacific Flyway are dictated by the status of Western Mallards. Duck season frameworks for the Central and Mississippi Flyway, this is all on the U.S. side, are dictated by the status of mid-continent mallards and pond counts in the U.S. and Canadian prairies. And then if you go to the Atlantic Flyway, duck season frameworks there are dictated by the combined status of four different species. And we'll get into some of this in subsequent podcast episodes and discussions as we get results from the surveys and AHM later this year. But I think the important point to to draw out here is that for hunters in the Pacific Flyway, their duck season framework is dependent upon the status of Western Mallards and survey results from California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska account for Western Mallards. That's the entire population. I'm not going to get into the specifics of how those what that AHM matrix looks like for the Pacific Flyway.
Nathan Ratchford: And just to clarify for our listeners, Alaska is in the traditional survey area.
Mike Brasher: Yeah, it gets a little confusing when you talk about the traditional survey area versus different stocks of duck populations. There's some overlap. It's not like the traditional survey area corresponds to a single stock of ducks. So when you talk about the waterfowl breeding population and habitat survey and the traditional survey area portion of that, there are certain strata within the traditional survey area that are kind of partitioned out and labeled as part of the western mallard population. And there are other strata that are partitioned out and labeled as part of the mid-continent population of mallards. It's a little confusing, but we're talking about survey results and we're talking about different stocks of birds. When we're looking at the Central Mississippi Flyway, we're talking about the status of mid-continent mallards, the survey results from the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan factor into or are considered part of the mid-continent mallard population. So the results from these state surveys do factor directly into setting duck season, duck harvest frameworks for those three flyways. Now in terms of being able to look at these state surveys and draw immediate conclusions on what the recommended duck season frameworks, regulatory packages are going to be for next year, because now we set seasons a year in advance. It's very difficult, it's impossible to do that for the mid-continent mallard population. You get part of the information for when you're looking at western mallards from the three states that we have here. And again, I guess without getting into a lot of details, what's not shown here in this article are the results from British Columbia as well as Alaska, and we won't have those data until later this month here in a week or so. So, if I'm a hunter and I see these results come out from these state surveys early, and I see an increase in mallard numbers 100%, 150% in Wisconsin, Michigan, or Minnesota, I have to realize that that's a very small percentage or a relatively small percentage of the overall mid-continent mallard population status. I can't get terribly excited one way, I shouldn't get terribly excited one way or another. I will say though, as Dan and John were pointing out earlier, those locally produced mallards and locally produced ducks of any type can be really important for what they experience, especially early in the season, independent of whatever influence they may have had on duck season frameworks. That make sense? Dan, John, anything that I screwed up there?
John Coluccy: No, no, I think you nailed it. The only thing I would say about these state-level BPOP estimates is that sometimes state-level decisions with respect to harvest management can be made. I know, you know, based on the trajectory of Great Lakes Mallards in the past, when the option of having two head mallards in the bag for a state was there based on the federal framework, some states elected to have a single head mallard. And that was probably in response to the trajectory of what's going on with the population in their state.
Mike Brasher: Yeah, we try not to… There's a whole nother conversation, deep conversation about harvest regulations, and we'll probably have that at some point, but it gets interesting.
Nathan Ratchford: It does. John and Dan, what were the, you know, for you in your respective regions, what were some of the things that you found most surprising, good or bad? You want to start, John?
John Coluccy: Yeah, I guess I'll start. Thanks, Nathan. Yeah, I think the result in Michigan this year from that survey was pretty surprising. You know, we had a 400% increase in the total duck estimate. We had a big increase in mallards as well, about a 200% increase. And so those were kind of those blips and the nuances that you need to look at in the data. And having talked to our partners with Michigan DNR that flew that survey, they did fly that survey a week early, So they thought they may have picked up some larger migrant groups, particularly of Mallards, be present still in the region that we're probably migrating through and going to settle in southern Canada somewhere across the border. And so there's a lot of nuances with these things and looking purely at the numbers you have to be kind of got to be careful and kind of understand the all these little nuances that happened. That was probably one of the bigger ones. Minnesota, I don't think, was a huge surprise this year. It was super dry. Had a kind of early, early ice out by their standards. I had a friend who lives in Bemidji, and you know, ice doesn't go out there until June, and it was much, much earlier this year when you think about that. And it was super dry, so that probably affected settling patterns there, and so there were You know, their numbers were down this year. Total ducks were down about 10% from last year, 34% from the long-term average. Mallards were also down about 37% from last year and about 38% from the long-term average. And so that was pretty I guess, expected given the conditions that were recorded during the survey. Since we've had a lot of rain, recorded a lot of rain across the entire region actually, which has really probably helped with the re-nesting effort, second, potentially third nests for mallards that tend to do so. Yeah, and should have made conditions better for brood ring.
Mike Brasher: You know, John, some of the things that you talk about here in terms of the timing of water arriving or the wetland conditions at the time when birds are migrating through are going to, you're kind of foreshadowing some of the conversations that we anticipate having once the results from the larger May survey come out because it's sort of the same thing in the Dakotas. Based on what we understand from some of the pilot reports, it was dry, very dry, leading into spring. And two to three weeks prior to them beginning to fly the survey in the Dakotas, they started getting some snow and rain that began to sort of change the condition of of wetlands and the number of ponds on the landscape, but some of the birds had already migrated through, and it sounds like that's kind of what you're talking about with regard to Wisconsin. I did note from several of those surveys, it was sort of similar. They were coming into that survey season pretty dry, but then I don't know if it was during the survey for either of those states, but definitely after. The survey was completed. They started to get, as you said, a lot of rain. Minnesota got just a ton of rain from, what, May into June. It was like nonstop. And so wetland conditions later into summer were vastly different than they were at the time of the survey. You know, despite Wisconsin… Tell me about this, John. So I was looking at that Wisconsin survey, the report, and… wetland indices for Wisconsin were down from last year, and in some cases substantially so, but they were still above the long-term average. Was it that wet in Wisconsin last year that you recall?
John Coluccy: Yeah, I think it was. Yeah, I mean, they had substantial rain. I remember when we do our habitat reports for the DU Magazine, you know, we do those periodically and update them. And, you know, when you look at the the departure from normal in terms of presentation there's a there's an app I look at I think it's a NOAA app and you know you see a lot of green areas on that map and as I recall that was the case last year and that those were areas that were well above average or normal precipitation. Yeah yeah I mean you're right Mike I mean looking at the regional breakdown from the survey strata There was a drop of anywhere from 10% to 37% in wetland densities, so pretty substantial, but still 57% to 84% above the long-term average in terms of wetland numbers, so pretty crazy.
Mike Brasher: Yeah, that's why it takes multiple years to kind of put things into context, right? Yep.
Nathan Ratchford: Yeah, absolutely. While we were talking about just some of this post-survey rain across the region, I pulled up this formal report from Minnesota DNR and it says that wetland conditions in spring of 24 were actually for type one wetlands 640%.
Mike Brasher: So they must have conducted their survey after all that rain arrived and whereas Wisconsin Yeah, I recall that. Now there could have been a variation in where that rain fell, but it could also be variation in, slight variation in the timing of when their surveys were conducted. So yeah, we're looking probably, and this is the way it goes every year, no matter which sort of spatial, which landscape you're looking at, there is variation in where that rain falls and how it impacts conditions for breeding ducks and where those ducks settle. It's kind of what we're seeing again there. Michigan, I think, John, the report, what I remember, described wetland conditions, breeding habitat conditions as being good to excellent for most of that state. Great lakes, water levels in pretty good shape. So, providing some good habitat there, but everything sounds pretty good from a habitat standpoint once you get beyond that early dry period, right?
John Coluccy: Yeah, yeah. I think the most productive region is the southern lower peninsula when you think about duck densities and the duck production here in Michigan, and that was an excellent condition when they flew the surveys. I think in the northern lower peninsula, they were good. The conditions were good. And, you know, I've been losing all this Michigan jargon here because we're a big peninsula, right? And then we've got the upper peninsula, and that was fair. But, you know, breeding pair densities are much lower in that landscape than down here in kind of the ag belt area in the northern lower peninsula. So, yeah, so conditions were fairly good here. And, you know, I think one of the One of the things that we also need to keep in mind, and I think we brought this up in the past on other discussions, is it's like our weather here, our precipitation patterns are much different from the Prairie Pothole region, and that's a good portion of Minnesota that's surveyed, that kind of southwestern, south-central southwestern section of the state there that's in the Prairie Pothole region, it's much more arid there and so much more prone to these big swings and drought, you know, and things like that. So we tend to have a little bit more stable conditions in Michigan and Wisconsin because we're more tied to the Great Lakes.
Mike Brasher: And then Canada geese, John, the Great Lakes states there, those three states in particular, are a hugely important area for Canada goose harvest. A lot of those are migrants, but then a lot of them are going to be locally produced birds, resident giant Canada geese. And I was looking at the numbers here, and I want to say Minnesota, two of the states were similar to last year. I think it's Wisconsin and Minnesota, similar to last year. Michigan, Kennedy's estimated 281,000, 29% increase from 2023. 21% above the long-term average, so still very healthy Canada goose populations, resident Canada goose populations there will provide some pretty quick early season hunting opportunities for folks up there, right?
John Coluccy: Yeah, early and late, as a matter of fact. We talked earlier on in the podcast here about local But Canada geese are very similar provide a lot of recreational opportunity and and for for early season early September hunting and then. We go pretty late here in Michigan into January, so there's a lot of late season opportunity too.
Mike Brasher: Quick question, John. So in a year like this where wetland conditions, I mean, Canada geese nest early, but then wetland conditions are vastly improved as we went into spring and into summer. Any feel for what that means for Canada goose productivity this year? Is there enough to know like how that kind of improvement in wetland conditions will affect them?
John Coluccy: Yeah, I, I don't, I don't know if there's ever been that connection like, you know, Canada geese are, you know, they typically are in these permanent kind of wetlands you see a lot of park ponds and things like that open water areas that have an island for nesting structure or. or somebody's got a tub up or something along those lines.
Mike Brasher: I like that you worked the tub in there. I appreciate that.
John Coluccy: Yeah, yeah. Well, I worked on resident geese in central Missouri, as you all know, for my graduate degree program, so I'm very familiar with them. But yeah, I mean, they're grazers, then they use the uplands quite a bit, but they do do a fair bit of foraging in wetlands as well. aquatic vegetation, both emergent and submergent. So yeah, certainly I think as we have improved conditions with weather conditions over time, that would bode well for brood production. Brood survival is pretty high with Canada geese anyway, so a little more help, a little more production probably. But yeah, they are prolific, I think, regardless of condition for the most part.
Mike Brasher: Dan, I want to go to you and talk about production out west. And let's start with California, because there were some pretty interesting results out of California. Last year, we were pretty excited by the increase in breeding population numbers from California, if I remember correctly. That was a… Last year represented a big turnaround from a wetland condition water availability standpoint, because we'd been through two, if not three years of extended deep drought out in California. Um, both from a precipitation as well as mountain snow melt standpoint, but things changed here a couple of years ago. And so give us an update on what we saw from the results out of California, the sort of the high level, the, the major talking points there.
Dan Smith: Yeah. So California was interesting. I mean, just jumping quickly to kind of preface what I'll be talking about here, but. You know, we really get that weather whiplash. We are not a consistently wet area, you know, so we go from really dry to really wet. And as you mentioned, we were coming out of a multi-year drought because of what we had in the previous year. And so we saw some pretty good production. Wetland habitat was good. I mean, it was maybe too wet. There was huge sheet water areas and kind of the traditional spots that we expect to see kind of shallower water. So, you know, there's some challenges with those surveys and comparing them just because it was so different. This year, from a precipitation standpoint, it was pretty average. It tended to be a little later than we tend to see, but I think some of the biggest things that we were looking at is really those Mallard numbers. You know, we're down 12% from 2023 in California, but we're still far below our long-term average yet. It may be challenging to get back there. But when we look at some other species, you know, the things that really stood out to me were really like pintail and northern shovelers. Those were still really high over our LTA. Those are typically what we consider more boreal breeding birds. So not, I mean, we certainly have local nesting pintail at very low densities and then some shovelers as well. But most of those birds tended to be hanging around, I think, and just not making that move back north yet because habitat conditions were good. And when we think about here in the West, it's like even last year from a wintering waterfowl perspective, things look very different. Waterfowl arrived late. Waterfowl usage in winter flooded rice was low. And just anecdotally, when I was actually out cleaning up my rice barn, I had huge numbers of ducks, typically when they're not there anymore. So it was interesting to kind of see that shift in migration and that kind of showed up in some of the survey numbers that we're seeing too.
Mike Brasher: So Dan, what's happening there in the Central Valley of California? I know we have the Sac Valley in the north, Sacramento Valley in the north, San Joaquin Valley in the south. I know this year the numbers in the Sacramento Valley, I can't remember if this was for mallards specifically or the total ducks. I think it was mallards specifically. It was the lowest number on record breeding mallards in the Sacramento Valley. What's going on there to the extent that we understand it?
Dan Smith: Yeah. So, I mean, that's a million dollar question, Mike. I would love to know exactly what's driving that. There's certainly a couple of hypotheses on what's happening there. But, yeah, I think to just point that out is pretty important. There was a long period of time where the Sacramento Valley held over 100,000 during that traditional survey that we were seeing. You know, there's points even here. I'm looking at some of the data. In 1999, they counted close to 260,000 mallards in the Sacramento Valley. And this year was 26,000 or close to 27,000. So that's a precipitous decline. And so what is exactly driving that? It would be great to know. That is a very agricultural landscape. So those mallards tend to work well in certain grain fields or fallowed fields or other areas where surface water is available and delivered. And as you mentioned, we came out of that drought period. So Those agricultural producers had to get really smart with how they're using water and placing water. And that means that it was probably limited access for some waterfowl during that point in time. And even just talking to some of the folks out there doing some of these surveys, when they're flying them, there's a lot of dry fields. Typically, we start to see some of those areas get wet and the timing wasn't there. So, you know, fingers crossed, maybe it's a shift in timing for them. But overall, I think there's a lot of change happening in that area.
Mike Brasher: Are there any changes in rice planting practices? Do they do dry seeding or are they reducing the amount of water they're putting on rice fields? And if you don't know all this right off the top of your head, we can punt to a later time, but I'm just kind of curious if any of the agricultural changes are tied directly to rice or if it's some of the other lands in production.
Dan Smith: Yeah, so we've certainly seen a lot more trees being planted in the valley, orchards for nut production typically. So we're hoping that rice base stays because it's critically important for feeding our wintering waterfowl. But we have seen a decline in grain crops and winter wheat and even different timing of those cereal grains that waterfowl could nest in. As far as water on the landscape for rice, this year was certainly late. We had some late rains which made it challenging for those growers to get into those fields to prepare them for planting. So planting was pretty delayed and there's actually some great research that shows if you can't get your rice seed in the ground by a certain date, you're just not going to make money. So that timing is really critical for those producers. When we're talking about planning those fields are prepped flooded and they actually fly the rice seed on in the Sacramento Valley so it's it's almost like they're doing a crop dusting right but it's with the seed so that timing was was very late and and fortunately or unfortunately depending on how you look at it we've had some really high. temperatures in the valley, many consistent back-to-back triple-degree days. And so that agricultural crop that we thought maybe was going to be delayed is now caught up with its traditional timing because of that heat. So it's a good thing for rice farmers and hopefully a good thing for the wintering ducks as they come down here.
Mike Brasher: Dan, I guess one question, then we'll move to some of the other states unless Nathan has a question for you for California. But what does it look like as we enter fall in terms of water availability for managed wetlands as well as winter flooded rice? Do you have a handle on that?
Dan Smith: That is a ongoing conversation. It changes. They released predictions occasionally early in the season. It looked like it was gonna be really good. And then, as I mentioned, we had a lot of high temperatures and a lot of reservoir storage capacity declined much more rapidly than what was predicted. So it may be lower than maybe we first kind of predicted. I still think it's gonna be better than our big drought years, but we'll kind of have to wait and see what ends up happening.
Mike Brasher: And, and I guess it just, you know, you mentioned a few things there that remind me, uh, the fire is the, is it the park fire that was going on?
Dan Smith: Yeah.
Mike Brasher: Is it still, is it still going right now?
Dan Smith: You know, the air quality has been good. I have stopped following it. I think containment kind of reached that point where they can start actually fighting the fire effectively. But, um, I, as far as I know, it's more well contained than it was a couple of weeks ago, but yeah, that was a, that was a big, scary one. And I hope. anyone near that area is I hope they're doing okay.
Mike Brasher: Yeah I know I say that you know we find ourselves having these conversations about duck numbers and wetland conditions and a lot of the times many times the places that we talk about that are important for waterfowl and waterfowl hunters are also some of the places that see some of these natural disasters whether we're talking about hurricanes in the gulf coast or the south atlantic or anywhere along the atlantic coast and then fires out west or up in the boreal forest of Canada, which is again the case this year. We just always, I think it's prudent and appropriate to pause and kind of keep things into perspective every now and then. There are issues that are much, much bigger and have much greater impact on the lives and well-being of people than the things that we're talking about right now. So yeah, our thoughts are certainly with everyone out there and I hope they get those things under control and people can get back to doing the things that they enjoy. Because I imagine a lot of the people that live in those areas are some of the people that we consider supporters and members and are conservationists in one way or another. And just a quick note to let everybody know we're thinking about y'all and hope everything kind of settles down quickly out there. So kind of, I guess, Dan, in that same vein of things that that occasionally happen unexpectedly or maybe sometimes expectedly that cause for some strife in one way or another. I want to move to Oregon now, northeastern California and Oregon, get you to talk about some of the results from there. And we heard earlier from Jeff McCreary about the outbreak of avian botulism. there in the Klamath Basin that, of course, we're talking about strife and some mortality and birds, but a lot of people are out there helping out with that issue as well. But let's talk about what you know and what we learned from results from Oregon and take that however you want to. What were some of the high points? And I know what happened in the Klamath is going to be this spring is going to be part of that discussion.
Dan Smith: Yeah. So Oregon, it was fantastic that, you know, all these state agencies, again, just The reason that we can even have these conversations, right, is because there's folks out here doing these surveys. And just touching on that, the data that is coming out of Oregon is great. They've been doing this for a really long time, since the early 90s. And they saw duck numbers actually go up since 2024 by like 53%, I think. So a huge jump in there. A lot of that was actually driven by, again, a similar thing that we saw in California, right? Shovelers, Greenwing Teal, and Pintail, a lot of those boreal breeding birds. But their mallard numbers look pretty consistent, which is nice. Oregon's another interesting place as far as agriculture is concerned. The Willamette Valley, traditionally a grass seed agriculture areas, there's some changes going on there that can potentially have some impacts to waterfowl, so we're tracking that. But I think really the big thing is what we've seen in Klamath. It's really what we're referring to as the sonic region, or southern Oregon, northeastern California. Right on that state border between Oregon and California, we have a really interesting complex of historical wetlands. Now it's significantly been reduced, and as we probably heard from Jeff in that soundbite earlier, we've had some good conditions show up. And I talked to John Vredenberg, who is a biologist with the Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge and Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge. And so he shared this information with me and he's just been really excited. You know there's a lot to be concerned about in the Klamath but we saw water enter that landscape and it made a huge recovery. Something that we were excited to see and that we were concerned we wouldn't see. But water entered that landscape again and the submerged aquatic vegetation made a huge return and that led to a lot of diving duck numbers bouncing back in a pretty amazing way. Canvasback and Redhead particularly. It was great to see those And so they've been doing a lot of summer banding and they're banding lots of birds. Some of the cool things that John was excited about too was talking about how high brood counts were. You know, this area got water on it, it was productive, and those birds took advantage. You know whether it was low predator numbers or really good habitat quality or even just good density dependence if you if you follow follow waterfowl ecology. Duck broods were some of the highest he's ever seen. I think he had an average of about eight mallards per brood and 12 gadwall per brood which is that's fantastic. Wow. Yeah. It's awesome. So it's exciting to see that area. You know, you just, you add water and you get ducks, which is something that's great to see. So hopefully they can make it through these, uh, these challenges with water restrictions coming up here and those birds are able to fledge and make it into that adult population. But just to even see that recovery, I mean, They're probably producing over 100,000 birds in that region. There's probably about 200,000 to 300,000 molting birds in that region. And it's not just ducks too. It's greaves, it's terns, it's ibis. It's a hugely important area for water birds in general. So to see that kind of water cycle come back and see those birds respond is nice.
Mike Brasher: I hope we get a near-term solution to the issue that's going on out there right now. I know Jeff told us that we are working multiple channels, multiple ways to try to make that happen. Man, yeah, you want to be able to see those birds get through this right now. And it's like a lot of these things, The formula isn't too complicated. Sometimes you just got to have the right variables in there. You got to have it. You got to have the water. It's crucial. And we had it early and we saw what happened, but now we got to keep it on there to fight the disease outbreak that we see happening now. What else from Oregon is worth mentioning there?
Dan Smith: You know, I think from Oregon, it's good to see that we had some precipitation that was relatively average or even minimal in Western Oregon. So there's some concerns about that. But we're still seeing habitat stay on the landscape. So, you know, with the birds that were there, I think decent production can kind of be expected. And I actually just heard from our regional biologist over in the Willamette region, and he says he's seeing broods. So we're hoping that, you know, Klamath is doing his thing. Southeastern Oregon is doing its thing, but we hope the rest of the state has pretty good production as well. It was definitely a brighter spot as far as the West is concerned. Oregon was doing pretty well.
Mike Brasher: And then I guess the last one is Washington. Dan, I'll have you kind of hit the high points there on the population levels, some of the notable items. And then Nathan, I know you had a back and forth with Kyle Spragans, a state waterfowl biologist out there who's kind of giving us an update on habitat conditions. But Dan, what can you, I'll come to you here in a minute, Nathan, for that. But Dan, what can you tell us there about notable population numbers out of the Washington survey?
Dan Smith: Yeah, so Washington is pretty interesting. When we look at their reports, they really split it Eastern Washington and Western Washington. And those areas trend differently based on different, you know, precipitation patterns and all those other things. And normally, kind of long-term data, we see Eastern Washington is more productive, particularly with mallards. And what we've seen recently is western Washington is ramped up and eastern Washington is kind of declined. So now they're meeting in the middle, which is a bit unusual. So I'm not sure exactly what's driving that or what that may mean for waterfowl hunters. But it's interesting to see that landscape change pretty dramatically. Gadwall numbers were way up this year for Washington, which was interesting to see. And, you know, their Mallards are unfortunately is still, still below their 2023 numbers and below their long-term average, but they're not missing that long-term average by much. So as far as that Washington trend, I mean, it's just a, it's a diverse landscape for sure. And so as the season progresses, I'd be curious to see what production looks like, but It sounds like, Nathan, you had a good conversation with Kyle, who's a fantastic waterfowl biologist for that state, so I became interested to hear what he talked to you about.
Nathan Ratchford: Yeah, absolutely. Kyle was one of many state agency representatives that I've been fortunate to speak to throughout putting this article together, and he provided a quote because Washington didn't release a formal press release around this, so that information was actually Gathered directly through our conversation exchanges with yourself as well like so he said that what Washington State particularly in the Columbia Basin. continues to experience long term drought crews reported wetland habitat conditions that range from similar to poor compared to previous years. In eastern Washington, several semi-permanent water bodies have dried up completely, shifting production potentially to higher river valleys and pothole regions. He goes on to say some of the early reports from Bain and Cruz indicate some marginal production so far. So yeah, for me, hearing some of these things is, it's really fascinating because as John talked about earlier, waterfowl scientists, I mean, they're interested in the long-term trends, right? And hearing Dan's report from the Klamath just to add water. And you see how quickly the ducks respond. For an average hunter, that's really a reminder and it's encouraging that there's a big difference between a dry wetland and a drain wetland. And you've talked quite a bit, Mike, on the podcast about some of the long-term benefits that drought may even have. But showing how a landscape, when it's ready and receives water, how quickly the waterfowl response. That's encouraging to me and puts these numbers, I think, into a larger context. And not to get alarmed with any short-term decreases, but to count on the professionals like you, Mike, like you, Dan, and John, to kind of provide that context, the long-term trend and looking at what's going on with habitat, what are the larger factors that drive these long-term trends in populations and not year-to-year where you're concerned over a 25% decrease. Always looking at what may be driving that, but just looking at the drought that has really been prevalent and putting it into a larger context and what we see and how that directly correlates with waterfowl populations. I think it's a It's a good reminder for me and it's awesome hearing things like what's coming out of the Klamath when just water.
Mike Brasher: Well, if we can get water back in there right now, it'll be really awesome. I know everybody's rooting for that. So, John, anything from your, as we do a little around the horn here to close this out, any
John Coluccy: Anything that we we missed any anything you want to add no I think it was great conversation and I think the last part of it is this is really important paper that you hit on it's like keeping the table set not losing basins you know we can't control the rain the precipitation. But what we can control is maintaining wetlands on the ground, so when water returns, the birds can respond. And so that's going to be the key to long-term sustainability of North America's waterfowl populations. And that's what Toxel Limit is all about.
Mike Brasher: Dan, anything, any final remarks from your neck of the woods?
Dan Smith: I mean, I think John captured it well. One of the challenges we have here in the West is surface water deliveries drive our wetlands. You know, rain is great, but It's never enough to fill up a wetland. Usually it falls somewhere else, either in the form of snow or higher up in the mountains, and then we send it to a wetland. And, you know, I hope that we continue to To ensure that those waterfowl areas have that innate value and that we continue to keep them wet and decide that that's the thing that we want to see on the landscape. And I know a lot of the state and federal managers I talked to, they want to keep them wet. So when you're out at your refuge and a unit is dry, don't blame that guy. He's doing the best he can with what he gets. So, yeah, I think maintaining that and making sure that when we do have the water, you know, we can have that big footprint, that's great. And when it is dry, there's going to be a little less, but we just hope it's going to be a wet year in the future.
Mike Brasher: Guys, we've covered some territory today, both in terms of topics as well as sort of geography from California up to Washington, all the way over to Michigan and a number of items in between. This is, I hope people have gained an appreciation for other areas that are important for duck production. And in doing so, they are important for your experiences in the field in the fall, or whether you're just like getting out and being around wetlands and looking at ducks and geese and all the other cool birds that use those wetlands. There's a lot happening out there. A huge thank you to our state agency partners who continue to invest in these type of surveys to collect these types of data, which when packaged together help us keep an eye and understanding on the status of these birds and their habitats and help inform our conservation activities. We have a lot of things that will happen between now and when folks will start actually getting in the field and hunting and there's a whole host of factors beyond the things that we've just talked about that will influence your success. Some of which includes how good a shot you are. So, you know, don't forget to practice that as well. That's right, but so a big thank you to everybody that joined to be part of this. Dan Smith, Dr. Dan Smith out in California, Dr. John Coluccy from up in Michigan, Nathan Ratchford here with me in studio, Jeff McCreary joined us for the early part, and then over in the corner here we have our producer Chris Isaac who's been working busily away doing other things and keeping us on track. We always appreciate the work he does. And to you, the listener, we thank you for joining us and we thank you for your support of wetlands and waterfowl conservation.