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After overwhelming response, duckDNA has officially returned for year 2! On this episode, Dr. Mike Brasher and Dr. Jerad Henson share this exciting news and what you need to know about the upcoming season. Also discussed are the forthcoming release of the breeding population survey, what it might mean for harvest regulations, the latest on Avian Influenza, and new programs that are improving DU’s ability to conserve waterfowl habitats through sustainability and ecosystem service benefits.
Creators & Guests
What is Ducks Unlimited Podcast?
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 your host on this episode, Dr. Mike Brasher, and I'm joined in studio, our fancy new studio that y'all can't see right now, but one of these days you will. I'm joined by my co-host, Dr. Jared Henson. Jared, great to have you in here. Really happy to be here. This is a really cool setup we've got.
Jared Henson: It is. It is. Lots of lights.
Mike Brasher: Lots of lights. We're going to have some camera action here. Some cool stuff in the future, yeah.
Jared Henson: I see cameras from different angles, so I think it's going to be some exciting stuff we can bring to you from here.
Mike Brasher: We'll see how it goes. Big experiment. Yes. So it's on the day that this is going to be released, it'll be August 1st. So we're kind of recording in the past a little bit here, but we have a few exciting updates to bring to you. This is one of our sort of monthly roundups. Just Jared and I here with you, our other co-hosts, Katie and Chris, were not able to join us today. But right off the top, the big announcement we've been leading up to this, working on this for quite some time, is that effective today, the application period for Duck DNA for the 24-25 season is now open. You should be able to go to duckdna.com and then find that link that says apply today. And that will get you on the list to participate, to be drawn for participating in Duck DNA for this upcoming season. We are going to have an episode in the near future with Dr. Phil Levretsky to do a pretty detailed recap of the first season. We've not done that yet. We've been working on a lot of things in the background. Uh, summarizing a lot of the results, working through a few improvements that we're going to make to this upcoming season. Uh, but, but we still have to kind of look back and share with all the participants, some of what we learned during that first year, some of the cool hybrids, uh, some of the cool stories, some of the things that we didn't execute on quite so well. Uh, but then other things that exceeded our expectations. It was, you know, so still have a lot of that to do, but Jared, you participated last year, I think.
Jared Henson: And the survey results from, I think, the supposed participation survey, those results came back out. I got those. That was pretty interesting. I think there were some common threads as far as feedback. Yeah, I participated last year. I thought it was really interesting. One of the things that I had, I had a weird bird, like you. that one of the last Mallard-Drakes I took last year was 25% Black Duck. And it looked just like a Mallard-Drake.
Mike Brasher: Yeah, I had one of those too. I've seen several of those, and that's one of the questions I want to ask Phil. And because some of the time, sometimes I would see the results, I'm like, boy, are those, is this right? But it's not that, my understanding is it's not that kind of complicated in terms of what it's what you're asking this program this analysis to do and so if it's identifying a bird that looks like pure black duck as 100% black duck and then if it is also detecting black duck genes at sort of 25% level in these other birds it should be right.
Jared Henson: It should be right and I mean those those 25% genes obviously are not contributing a whole lot to plumage. Yeah. And so that's part of it but No, I thought that was really interesting. I thought there was some other stuff that I've, I've kind of heard through the grapevine from some of the results that are, I'm excited to hear the, uh, kind of the roundup you were talking about there. Um, I thought it was a fun process, uh, and the, and the kind of rewarding to see what you got back, uh, that unknown.
Mike Brasher: Well, there's a lot of things to share in terms of the reception that the project received, the feedback that we got, a few other metrics to share, but we're going to save most of that. Jared, you talked about the survey and survey results. We've not, I don't think those are posted online. I'm not sure when we're going to do that, but for the participants from this first year, we shared a quick 10 or 12 question survey asking for feedback, things that worked, things that need to be improved. We've implemented some of those, as many of those improvements as possible. Some of those are like ambitional improvements that will be implemented only if we can get additional resources brought to this. So, so anyway.
Jared Henson: Some of those were like just a tweak to the app though and stuff, right?
Mike Brasher: That's correct. That's correct. We're working on a different box and all that type stuff. And once we get Phil on here, I think we'll have most of that finalized and we'll also hopefully have the video component of this where people can can see some of those things. One other thing that I guess the highlights that the one thing I need to let people know since we're talking about the application period now being open. Even if you applied last year, you have to reapply at this point forward. There's some reasons for that. They kind of relate to our database management and how we're pulling names and just helping us organize various things. But if you want to be eligible to participate in this coming year, you have to reapply. Even if you applied, went to the site two days ago and applied at that time, or three days ago, or sometime in the recent period. Uh, that would have just put your name on a list to receive an email notifying you of when this application period is open. So the key message is you have to apply again. And apply now. Apply now. That's right. Uh, we are one of the two of the important changes that we're making. I can at least share this. We're going to try to enroll more people this year due to the overwhelming demand last year. Uh, we're going to try to enroll somewhere in the neighborhood of 700 participants. Uh, so over double what we tried to do last year, but we are going to be scaling back the number of vials that each participant is going to receive. And instead of five last year, we're only going to be doing three this year. That is going to help us achieve greater participation across the waterfowl hunting community, greater spatial, geographic representation. And also, I think sometimes some people had difficulty filling all five aisles last year, just because of the slow hunting season. Last year was tough. Last year was tough, and so we're going to, those are some of the notable changes. But yeah, duckdna.com, click the apply now button, and then we're going to be selecting names periodically throughout the hunting season, starting I think in early September and going through maybe mid-December. We'll cover all that stuff and how that process is going to work in a subsequent episode. But yeah, the important thing, go apply, get your name in the hat. Still free of charge, thanks to our donors that are supporting this project. And Jared, hope to see your name in there again as well.
Jared Henson: Oh, I will definitely throw my name back in there. I thought, like I said, I thought it was very interesting and I think there's some really important research that's coming out of this and science that's coming out of this and the DNA work and just scaling that is really important. We've seen it, I think we saw it in a recent episode on the Great Lakes Mallards, how important some of this data can be, the DNA can be, so if you can scale that across the North American landscape, you can have a lot better idea of how far some of these concerns may go.
Mike Brasher: For sure. So thanks for everybody's support and look forward to y'all joining us again on this exciting journey. Don't know what it's going to look like beyond this year, but we will, uh, we got to get through this year first. And so, uh, stay tuned for more information on duck DNA. Next thing I want to talk about real quick. We're here in August and all waterfowl hunters probably know if you've been around for any length of time that. We get into August and that's when the Waterfowl Breeding Population and Habitat Survey results come out. It's the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service releases the results of those surveys in their Waterfowl Status Report. That's going to come out later this month. They also release at that time their Adaptive Harvest Management Report, which will lay out the recommended harvest regulations for the 25-26 season. I can tell you that we in Ducks Unlimited are already developing our communication plans around all that we're going to do immediately following the release of that report. It'll be similar to what you saw last year, so stay tuned to all of your all your Ducks Unlimited platforms. We're also going to be doing the Waterfowl Season Outlook again. You heard about that on a recent episode. The date for that remains August 26th. It will be an evening event. It will be live. We're working on a few additional modifications to the format of that. So, yeah, we're getting close, man. We're getting close to the release of some important data. I think some people are nervous. I've had somebody call me yesterday or email yesterday wanting to know if we'd heard anything yet. I said, no, I haven't heard anything. It is fair to say that People, it is fair to say, I think, that we are closer to the possibility of something other than a liberal framework for the Central and Mississippi Flyways than we have been since AHM was implemented. I think that's fair to say.
Jared Henson: Yeah, I mean, we've had two to three pretty poor reproductive years. Yeah.
Mike Brasher: Now, the way that process works is it uses the data, feeds it into this matrix, and I can see, I think we had some earlier conversations with, who was that, I guess it was Katie Burke was on the episode, along with Scott Stevens, we kind of did our, our projections, whether we thought the BPOP number was going to be up, down, or about the same. I think I went up just slightly. But I don't know. I could see it going any way. Either way, I think we're going to be close when the numbers come out, you know, to it going into something other than a liberal season. So I think there's going to be some part of the hunting community that's out there right now that think it's Pretty much a done deal that when the numbers come in they're gonna recommend a moderate or restrictive season think there's others that that think it's it's gonna be close but we're still gonna be in that liberal framework I have my. I have my thoughts and my, I guess, my tendencies in terms of where I think it'll be, but I'm not going to share those publicly because we don't know. I've not seen the data. Nobody else that I know of has seen the data other than maybe the, well, the folks within the Fish and Wildlife Service that collect the data, they're processing the data, they hold that data very close, and that'll all come out later on this month. Then the entire waterfowl management community will be reacting to it. I know the flyway councils, their tech sections are already talking about, okay, what if it is a restrictive season for the Mid-Continent Mallard framework? That would be the first time that many of our hunters have dealt with that. We need to be thinking about our communication plan around this. What does it mean? Is it And then how do we share that with our constituents? And so people are working on various scenarios and we're doing the same thing. I've told people, I don't know if we're going to have a moderate or restrictive season this year. But one thing I can tell you is that eventually it will happen. It could be this year, it could be next year, it could be 15 years from now. But one of these days, just based on probabilities alone, we will have a moderate or restrictive season. And that's the way this adaptive harvest management process is supposed to work. It responds to the data, prescribes these regulatory strategies that over the long term are designed to sustain waterfowl populations at these healthy levels. So, that's where we are. Yeah.
Jared Henson: I mean, and you can go online and you can get, I know that they haven't released any of that, but there are what the pilot biologist reports are out there on the US Fish and Wildlife Service. So, if you want to get a general idea of kind of what it does look like, you can read some of those pilot biologist reports that have been published.
Mike Brasher: Yeah, and we've talked about that on a few previous episodes. The prairies are wet right now, but a lot of that rain came after the survey was conducted and the numbers that will feed into the adaptive harvest management framework will reflect conditions at the time the surveys were conducted. So, it makes it real challenging because, you know, if the rain had not come until all of the surveys had been conducted, all the routes had been conducted, I would be more firmly in the camp of, yeah, boy, it's really feeling like we're headed towards a moderate or restrictive season. But the fact that some of that rain came before the surveys began, and probably boosted the number of wetlands that were going to be estimated. I don't know. I could kind of see it going either way and so.
Jared Henson: Yeah, when we were in Alberta. Wetland conditions were pretty good. Habitat conditions did. They looked great and there were ducks on the habitat. And they were nesting and successful nests already.
Mike Brasher: So, it's just going to be entirely a question, not entirely, but partially a question of the timing of that rain relative to the timing of those surveys. And we've had a string of interesting years, and this is yet another one, right? I figure it won't be the last. That's right. So, stay tuned for all that good information. You'll see that coming out here within the next three weeks. So, follow along and learn along with us. The next thing I wanted to mention just briefly, Jared, is some additional work and reporting that we've been doing on the highly pathogenic avian influenza. Nothing new really to report on the bird side of things. We discussed, I'm not sure if we'd reported on this in a previous episode, but of course the big development this year, this summer, spring and summer, was the detection of highly pathogenic avian influenza or the virus that causes it and I guess the disease itself in dairy cattle and a lot of things that went along with that. We still intend to connect with someone here in the next few weeks for another update on that. It's been a while since we provided any of that. Any, you know, whether there are any changes to to the guidance to waterfowl hunters, and I can tell you there's not. People are still advising, the authorities are still advising waterfowl hunters to take appropriate precautions, especially if you have any interaction, immediate or indirect, with poultry operations, whether commercial or backyard. Um, dairy cattle now, although the mode of transmission there seems to be a little bit unique based on what they understand. And so, um, I, I don't, I, I think it's my understanding from reading various things that they can kind of trace what's happening in the dairy cattle, um, situation back to an isolated sort of spillover event or, or maybe a couple of events. It's not like there's ongoing. It's my understanding. It's not as though there is ongoing. kind of avian to dairy cattle transmission. So this— It was a unique incident. Herd got infected, and then before they realized what had happened, some of those cattle started being moved from operation to operation. And that's, they think that's the primary reason for the spread across dairy cattle right now. So, but still a lot of testing to be done and a lot of monitoring and surveillance to be done there. Waterfowl hunters still have a role to play. in sharing information with our state and federal partners, especially as they're doing their surveillance efforts of harvested ducks this fall and winter, so I encourage folks to participate in those.
Jared Henson: And if you do find a, you know, a dead bird or something that you suspect is that, you can contact your state Game and Fish or DNR and let them know and they will send out the appropriate people to test.
Mike Brasher: Yeah, we're going to be, we have a magazine article coming out in the next issue, the Understanding Waterfowl section on HPAI. We had not covered it in any kind of feature or with any depth thus far. We wanted to wait and see how things were unfolding. And so you can look to that for a quick summary of all that we know, some of the history of HPAI and how it came to be. Also, other information related to this is still available on the Ducks Unlimited website, ducks.org forward slash avianflu. A lot of resources there, some frequently asked questions. So, go check that out. I don't think there's anything else I wanted to mention on avian influenza. You got anything, Jared?
Jared Henson: I think that's it.
Mike Brasher: Yeah, we still don't, still not heard anyone saying we anticipate this to have major long-term impacts on waterfowl populations, maybe a few isolated situations and isolated species where it might have had a noticeable effect breeding population or breeding colony size or production, things of that nature, but I'm not hearing that it is a, I'm not hearing it being identified as a major contributor to any decline in any waterfowl population right now. Right.
Jared Henson: Anecdotally. my duck camps in a middle of a very, very large light goose wintering area. And it seems like when they first arrive, they're hit pretty hard. But after like three weeks, you don't notice it anymore. It seems like they all got to the wintering area. They passed it around. Some of them didn't survive, but most of them do. And they get over it and you don't see it anymore. And I think that's really interesting to see that. that aspect of it. And that's all, like I said, that's just my first-hand experience seeing it. I don't think there's anything published on any of that yet.
Mike Brasher: The other thing that is probably getting people's attention right now around avian influenza is the increasing number of human cases being detected, mostly among those dairy cattle workers. And that relates, I think, to the ability of that where the virus is concentrated in the milk. And so you've got dairy cattle workers in close contact with milk. And it's already got into a mammal. Yeah, yeah, well it's been detected in over 20 different mammals.
Jared Henson: Right, but I mean it's transmitting mammal to mammal, that's the thing at this point. Because before it wasn't, it was thought that it wasn't transmitting mammal to mammal, it was still those isolated bird to mammal cases. If a fox ate too many. Infected birds or a hunting dog got a hold of too many of them, something like that.
Mike Brasher: Yeah, it's my understanding that the viral loads in the milk is really high and so they think that it's by those milk droplets or whatever that it may be infecting the dairy cattle workers, but for the average person, The health experts tell us that the risk of transmission of contracting it remains low. Still take precautions, especially if you're in close contact with dairy cattle, in this case, or birds. So, we'll have more information from the actual authorities here once we get going forward in the fall and winter. We've connected with another person that we've not talked with before, and so he's agreed to come on and join us probably, I don't know, in the next couple of months. So, just stay tuned for that. And let's see, Jared, I think you have a couple of things you wanted to update us on, so you go with your next update.
Jared Henson: Yeah, Mike, I've got, you know, I work on the sustainability and ecosystem services side, and I think there's a couple points that I wanted to highlight, some big things that are happening on that side that were worth a shout out for sure. First one being, we had our, this August, so the end of the month, we will have our first graduate from a natural infrastructure fellowship program that we have going right now. DU is helping to fund master's students in a civil engineering program. The program right now is at UGA, so at Georgia. We also have one at Iowa State as well that's starting up soon. And this is a really cool thing because it's funding students that have projects, number one, that have natural infrastructure. So that's green infrastructure, that's wetland restoration, right? But all of their projects need to have a dual ecosystem service and waterfowl aspect. How do we design wetlands to be good at doing everything, right? How do we prioritize that? Madeline Carpenter did hers. She did hers up in the Western Lake Erie Basin. One of the really cool aspects about her project, she was looking at phosphorus sequestration because agricultural phosphorus runoff in that area tends to lead to algal blooms in the Great Lakes. And it's a big issue for pollution up there. So she looked at a way to figure out how the habitats, she was modeling this, how do you find habitats and wetlands that sequester phosphorus really well? But then they also looked at brood pairs. So which ones are also producing waterfowl well? And so based on that information, she tried to find parsimonious models, so models that were good and habitats that were good at doing both. And then where you should prioritize those within that region to get the best bang for your buck. So she had these big prioritization projects as well and water management strategies. How do you get the best phosphorus sequestration? Maybe during summer or winter when we're not using those. And then, or how do you manage water for ducks too? On the same habitat to get everything out. So she had a really cool project. I thought that was pretty interesting to see. That natural infrastructure program right now has 13 students in it. Wow. And they range from doing projects on the Gulf Coast,
Mike Brasher: And so is there background in engineering? They are.
Jared Henson: They are, well most, most of them, 80% of them I think right now are background in engineering. We have a couple that have a background in wildlife. One that has a background in landscape architecture. So, looking at broad things and looking to take this into some economics and policy too.
Mike Brasher: Do you know, right off the top of your head, if you said it was Madeline? Madeline Carpenter. Madeline Carpenter. What did she learn, kind of high level, about trade-offs between managing for phosphorus and ability to provide habitat for ducks? Do you know?
Jared Henson: Water level matters. Okay. Yeah, and that's what's going to be the trick is finding that happy medium of water level. Actually, too deep can be not good for either, and too shallow is not good for phosphorus sequestration to a certain degree. You don't want to dry it out because then it starts releasing it. Oh. So, it needs to stay wet. That was some of the stuff that she found out.
Mike Brasher: And that phosphorus is taken up by the plants? Right.
Jared Henson: Okay. And so, So that was some of the stuff she found.
Mike Brasher: Okay. Yeah. What are some of the other, I know there's one of the students, one of the fellows that is researching sort of optimal design for marsh terracing along the Gulf Coast. Yeah.
Jared Henson: We have some others out West doing beaver dam analogs. Okay. So out in Western areas where beavers aren't as much of a nuisance as they are say in the Mississippi. Still trying to repopulate in some areas maybe. Right. And so trying to do beaver dam analogs that are great for wetland restoration, but also really good for fish. So working in those same systems there. And there's another one working on floodplain connectivity and such on the Atlantic coast as well and looking at how sea level rise might impact that.
Mike Brasher: And this is a good thing, not just because of the information that they're providing that can inform, perhaps, redesigns or changes to the way we do work, but also because it gets Ducks Unlimited's name on the radar of people that may be, that are pursuing engineering careers, because a lot of folks don't realize how reliant we are on engineers for doing the work that we do. And we have in-house, most of our engineers are in-house. I think we contract with a few in some locations, but that's not our preferred method, right?
Jared Henson: In classic civil engineering, it's not really green infrastructure heavy as far as teaching these things. So, that program is through IRIS. There's a center at Georgia. What is that? Institute for Resilient Infrastructure. IRIS. IRIS is good.
Mike Brasher: Yeah.
Jared Henson: So, so a lot of resiliency, but it's this green infrastructure aspect that DU does really well, wetland restoration and using natural habitats and natural ecological processes to achieve civil engineering goals. So not a lot of, you know, engineers fresh out of school have that training. So if we can help accelerate that. and get that as a mainstay in how we do civil engineering. I think that's a good thing. It's also all of our engineering students say they would consider a, our fellows say they would consider a job with DU. Yeah, that's cool.
Mike Brasher: And so, we don't have any that have made that transition yet.
Jared Henson: Not yet, but we just have our first one now. She has a job back home where she was going. I don't think we had a job. We did not have an opening at the moment, but she did express interest if one did come about.
Mike Brasher: One of these days it'll happen. Exactly. I mean, she's only the first one too, right? So, we're just right out of the gate.
Jared Henson: Like I said, we got several more going on.
Mike Brasher: So, yeah. That's exciting. We look forward to those updates going forward and how that information actually is incorporated into what we do, making us better and how we're using the money to deliver on all these different benefits while still supporting waterfowl and providing that important habitat.
Jared Henson: And I think that was a big thing. I was going to just say, yeah, that's the big thing is that these projects have that ecosystem service component. and a waterfowl component, and a lot of times that ecosystem service component is what can actually garner funding.
Mike Brasher: Yeah, absolutely. Cool. So, your next item, I think, is talking about another project. It has some elements of the traditional work that we do, but there's a different sort of angle to some of it. The Flyway Forest Program. So, tell us about that.
Jared Henson: Yeah. So, Flyway Forest, and I Have we mentioned this before on here? I don't remember if we have. Maybe briefly, but it's it's a reforestation program. Kind of similar to like a WRE program in the South.
Mike Brasher: So it's Wetland Reserve, formerly Wetland Reserve Program.
Jared Henson: Right. And so this is a reforestation program that focuses on bottomland hardwoods within the MAV, the Mississippi Alluvial Valley. So it is kind of bounded by that. which is a priority landscape for us and reforestation has tons of wildlife benefits, tons of waterfowl benefits from a food standpoint, but it also has carbon benefits. So we were approached and we partnered with a couple of different other entities. One's a tech company that does carbon monitoring and the other one is a an investment firm that likes to fund these types of green projects. So we partnered with them. We've been working on a pilot, which is a 3,000 acre pilot of Reforestation. We're well over halfway through that pilot. And we just received a U.S. Forestry Service IRA grant for $10 million to expand that to another 3,000 acres and to focus on kind of some underserved landowners as well.
Mike Brasher: So tell me briefly about how this works in terms of you enroll people, then they get a payment. They do. So tell us about some of that just to give people an idea.
Jared Henson: Yeah, so the program essentially is… If you're willing to put your program in this conservation program, it is an easement program, so we will come in… Your property. Your property, yeah. You'll put your property into this program, we'll reforest it, we pay for all the costs on that, and then we will pay you, it's $2,200 an acre is the payment right now. That's a one-time… No, it's not a one-time payment, it's over five years.
Mike Brasher: It's over five years, yeah.
Jared Henson: And that's the payout on it. And in that way, that would basically be what you would make off the carbon long term. We give that up front. We reserve those carbon rights. And then we put in a perpetual easement on the property that protects the forest for 40 years. The carbon project is only about 40 years. So we can take those carbon credits off of it for 40 years. And then after that, We're happy to work with you and our biologists to try and do a forest management program for wildlife after that 40-year window, but the forest will be protected under that easement as well, but we want to be.
Mike Brasher: So the trees are covered by the 40-year. easement, but the property by a perpetual easement. The property by perpetual, and the forest on the property. The restrictions on that are going to be a little bit different when we're talking about the 40-year versus the perpetual. And we don't need to get into the details here. If you're interested in this, folks can reach out and get in touch with us.
Jared Henson: Yeah, ducks.org, Flyway Forest.
Mike Brasher: Yeah, or yeah, okay, ducks.org forward slash Flyway Forest.
Jared Henson: Okay, learn more about it there. And if you're interested, yeah, feel free to reach out to me or to Lauren Ellman. She's our carbon specialist that's been been running that program. We're getting a lot of interest there. And we're really excited about this new forest service because it allows us to also stack a new ecosystem service and try and pilot some projects around biodiversity, which that's what we do. Yeah, we build wetlands for wildlife. specifically waterfowl focus, but ducks aren't the only thing benefiting off of that habitat. Wading birds, amphibians, reptiles, insects, pollinators, all the above, etc. And so we're trying to figure out how to pilot that and get that angle on some of these projects to use that as leverage for funding in the future.
Mike Brasher: Yeah, and I know we've talked about this on some previous episodes, but why we do this, why we talk about carbon, why we talk about biodiversity, why we talk about flood retention, things of that nature, is because those are things that matter to other people. Like we and our core membership, our core audience, our waterfowl hunters, we're obsessive and passionate about ducks, right? And so that's why we care about this. That's why we care about delivering this habitat work. But there are other people, other parts of society, thousands, hundreds of thousands of millions of people that care about clean water and everything else, the butterflies, the bees. We can satisfy the things that they care about by delivering the habitat that we've always done, maybe with a few tweaks here or there, without sacrificing the benefits to waterfowl. Some of the work that you talked about with the infrastructure or the The fellowship program is important, making sure we're looking at those trade-offs. That's what this is about. That's why we're talking about these things. The people that care about biodiversity, water quality, carbon sequestration, won't partner with us unless they know that's the type of stuff that we can deliver, right?
Jared Henson: Right. These are funds that we wouldn't get otherwise. But it's the work we already know how to do and we're good at. Like you said, there may be a few tweaks here or there to it. than maybe what we would have done traditionally, but it opens up lots of new doors.
Mike Brasher: Well, and the one thing we know is that the only constant in this world is change. And so things change for one reason or another. We adapt to sort of meet some of those changes and respond to some of those changes while keeping an eye on our mission and making sure that we're delivering habitat to keep the ducks abundant and plentiful and available for everyone to enjoy however they choose to enjoy them, right? Right. Yep. So that is exciting news that's occurring down here in the Mississippi alluvial valley, Mississippi, Arkansas, where what's the Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana primarily, but anywhere within the MAV.
Jared Henson: So there's a small area in Missouri, Missouri Boothill area, as well as some of Western Tennessee that could qualify as well.
Mike Brasher: All right, very good. Jared, I did have a couple of other things that I was going to mention here, but I think we're running out of time. I got to run to another meeting. So, we'll just have to save those for later. They will still be relevant here next time we do one of these. People can just have to wait and tune in and see what it might be that we would talk about next time. Any final words from you?
Jared Henson: No, that's it. I'm starting to get geared up for hunting season. It's starting to get there and tick with all the bee pop stuff coming out.
Mike Brasher: It's crazy. Like, but when this airs, it'll be August 1st and in a month, you know, be after doves or early season Canada geese or… Not long after that, blue wings. That's right. It's here, man. It's right on the cusp. And I need it because it's hot outside. That's right. It's raining outside today when we're recording this, so that's a welcome relief. But yeah, got a lot of exciting things planned here as we go forward this fall. Stay tuned. You're going to be part of it, and we appreciate everybody's support. Jared, thank you for being part of this. Thanks for letting me jump in today. Yeah, you bet. Thanks to our producer over there, we can actually see him now, given this new orientation here in the studio. So, big thanks to Chris Isaac for all the work that he does. And then you, the listener, we wouldn't be doing this without you. We appreciate all the feedback that we get. However it comes to us, we appreciate it. Send us your suggestions. You can send us emails at, what is it, Chris? At dupodcastatducks.org. Did I get that right? See, I'm looking at you. Is that right? Yeah, it's dupodcastatducks.org. So, send us your, any suggestions you have, and thanks for everything y'all do. Thanks for your support of wetlands and waterfowl conservation. Thank you, everybody.