TRADITIONS OF WATERFOWL 



is gone forever" from South Dakota. The exclamations against the loss 

 gained in vigor, but the drainage forges ahead. 



As the marshlets lose their water, the waterfowl breeding traditions 

 are broken forever. In another human generation, the people of the land, 

 wildfowlers and farmers alike, will be unaware of this heritage lost, as un- 

 knowing of the legions of Canvasback and Pintail once nesting here as the 

 present generation is unaware of swan and pigeon. The landplanners who 

 advise and subsidize the farmers to spill the water from their holdings tell 

 us their eyes are on the future, on the years ahead, when the human popu- 

 lations of the 1980s and 1990s will require the returns of a greater agri- 

 cultural productivity. "Get the potholes out of the way now," they say, 

 "and the land will be ready for the wheat and corn our children and grand- 

 children will need." 



What about waterfowl for the grandchildren; what about wildfowling 

 in 1990? The economists, if they are thinking of ducks at all, count on the 

 north for the birds of the future. The north always has been the horn of 

 plenty for the wildfowler. However badly the home marshes have fared, 

 however thin local populations have become, there is the everlasting hope 

 for a grand north flight. But we must understand that the north country 

 cannot supply all the waterfowl now and forevermore. Despite the vast, 

 pristine northland, much of the finest waterfowl-breeding grounds in all 

 North America remains within the realm now used by man. This is espe- 

 cially true for many of our most important game species. Some of the best 

 breeding grounds — particularly the true prairie country of eastern Saskatch- 

 ewan, Manitoba, the Dakotas, Minnesota, and Wisconsin — is also some of 

 the best farmland. In 1953 careful breeding-season estimates by transect 

 sampling revealed that North and South Dakota together held nearly 

 2,500,000 breeding ducks.* These included some of our finest game species : 

 Mallard, Gadwall, Baldpate, Blue-winged Teal, Pintail, Redhead, Canvas- 

 back, Lesser Scaup. In that same year another survey by experienced biolo- 

 gists flying transects over several thousand miles of the lake-studded wilds 

 of western Ontario (which on a map looks like a waterfowl paradise) and 

 northern Saskatchewan showed that on some 400,000 square miles of this 

 north country, there were approximately 1,181,000 breeding ducks (Wellein 

 and Newcomb, 1953a). The combined area of the two Dakotas is 147,712 

 square miles. Thus a parcel of Ontario and Saskatchewan wilderness al- 



•The 1953 index figure for North Dakota waterfowl was 1,459,839 ( Fashingbaur, 1953: 

 188). The 1953 index figure for South Dakota was 1,021,000 (Murdy and Anderson, 1953:192). 



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