Duck habitat program praised
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Flooding agricultural lands for an additional and potential alternative habitat for migrating waterfowl may not have detoured any birds, wildlife biologists say, but it did provide a valuable service.
The extra habitat was created in response to concerns that oil from the April 20 Deepwater Horizon rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico would affect habitat used by migrating birds.
Although wildlife biologists agreed that creating additional habitat could only help in an area with years of coastal land loss and, more recently, a lack of rain, some questioned whether birds would change their wintering location if other habitat was available.
The Natural Resources Conservation Service and its partners are conducting a three-year study to see what effect the Migratory Bird Habitat Initiative, the program that created the new habitat, had on migration.
“It does not seem that the oil spill impacted a lot of the habitat we thought could happen,” said John Pitre, NRCS wildlife biologist.
However, resource management agencies have been wanting to create additional habitat for a long time but haven’t had the money, Pitre said.
Larry Reynolds, waterfowl study leader for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, agreed.
“We’ve lost so much capacity to winter ducks along the coast that we have to make up for it somehow,” Reynolds said.
According to a recently completed waterfowl survey, it doesn’t appear that the additional habitat kept any migrating birds away from southeast Louisiana, the area most heavily affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster.
The report says a total of 491,000 ducks were seen in the southeast portion of the state — a number much higher than in previous years, Reynolds said.
The estimates for the three previous Novembers have been 160,000, 200,000 and 170,000, according to the waterfowl estimate report. The higher number this year is similar to November estimates found in 2005 and 2006, the report says.
“Whatever happened to short-stop ducks from getting into south Louisiana didn’t work,” Reynolds said.
But the additional habitat created through the program has helped migrating ducks and other birds, especially after the state had months of below-normal rainfall, he said.
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