BROKEN TRADITIONS 



most three times as big as Dakota farmland accommodates less than half 

 the Dakotas' supply of ducks. What is more, half these northern birds were 

 mergansers or other nongame species. 



We know, of course, that this spruce and muskeg country of Ontario 

 and northern Saskatchewan is not the finest of the wilderness breeding 

 grounds, hardly comparing with the Yukon's Old Crow Flats or the Macken- 

 zie delta. A 1953 aerial survey of the finest waterfowl range in the Yukon 

 and Northwest Territories of Canada gave an estimate of a breeding popu- 

 lation of 2,267,000 ducks on 235,000 square miles (Smith and Sutton, 1953). 

 Thus the best of the north country requires twice the area to accommodate 

 the same number of ducks that breed in the Dakotas. There are vast regions 

 of the Arctic — the Barren Grounds away from the seacoasts and the river 

 valleys — where waterfowl numbers average less than one duck per square 

 mile (Wellein and Newcomb, 1953b). It would take an area of such country 

 ten or twelve times the size of the Dakotas to hold the same number of 

 breeding ducks. 



Take the potholes out of the Dakotas and Minnesota and we have cut 

 a major slice from the wildfowling of the future. Schoenfeld ( 1949 ) pointed 

 out that in Day County alone, the loss from drainage up to 1949 had de- 

 stroyed a waterfowl range that was ten times as productive as Manitoba's 

 famed Delta Marsh. Whichever side of the international border the drain- 

 age occurs on, both Canadian and American wildfowlers must mourn the 

 loss together. And wildfowlers of the United States must realize that in 

 Canada the waterfowl range "is more limited than would first appear. Many 

 sites which provide accommodation for ducks also provide attractive areas 

 for the growing of crops and, with continuing agricultural expansion, are 

 being withdrawn from natural waterfowl habitat" (Colls, 1951). Speaking 

 of the prairie and parkland region of Saskatchewan, Gavin ( 1953 ) says that 

 "when settlers first moved into these areas, lakes, sloughs and potholes 

 were in abundance. Loss of much of these breeding areas has been a major 

 blow to waterfowl. . . . Traveling through these areas today and trying to 

 compare them with the older large-scale maps provides a shock that can- 

 not be adequately described." 



Pothole country is the finest of all breeding ranges because the scat- 

 tered water areas let the pairs spread far and wide over the land. Gregarious 

 through most of the year, ducks isolate themselves, much in the same way 

 as Robins and Song Sparrows, during the nesting season, each pair keep- 

 ing separate from others of the same species. The small sloughs and pot- 



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