One of the most difficult things for many sportsmen and farmers to understand is the complexity of duck production. However, this much is certain. It takes a wetland complex and abundant upland grass nesting cover to produce puddle ducks.
The least understood are those many farmers refer to as “nuisance wetlands,” more correctly called seasonal or temporary wetlands. They’re small, less than an acre, and hold water for just 10 days to several weeks. However, their size is out of proportion to their importance. They warm quickly in the spring, almost immediately bursting forth with invertebrates, food ducks require to make it to the breeding grounds in healthy condition.
Farmers understandably don’t like plowing around small wetlands. One farmer in southeastern South Dakota told me it costs him several hundred dollars each year. However, he is compensated under the Swampbuster provision in the Farm Bill. If he chooses drainage, he forfeits commodity payments, which was the intent of the provision.
That upsets some farmers and there’s no shortage of elected officials willing to go to bat for them. Some years ago Bob Dole, then a Kansas senator, offered legislation that would exempt all wetlands of less than an acre from Swampbuster regulations. In South Dakota, that would have opened almost 90 percent of the wetlands to drainage, though a bit less in North Dakota. Fortunately for ducks and hunters, Dole’s effort failed.
Today, Minnesota hunters bemoan the loss of their ducks, though many fail to realize the lack of duck production there is tied directly to the disappearance of small wetlands. Nearly all now drain into tile that carries the water to the nearest ditch and ultimately into an already swollen river. Science supports the belief that practice adds to flooding.
Only a remnant of wetlands still exist in central and southern Minnesota, once a significant part of North America’s duck factory. All that remains of a once great resource are larger, deeper semipermanent wetlands which are fine for migrating ducks in the fall, but near useless for spring migrants requiring invertebrates now consumed by minnows.
Just as Dole tried to help farmers drain small wetlands, Rep. Collin Peterson,
D-Minn., now steps forward, recently accompanying Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Chief Bruce Knight to meet with farmers in Morris, Minn. Knight, a former chief lobbyist for the National Corn Growers Association, now regulates the agency he once tried to manipulate, and the NRCS is often accused of failure to enforce wetland regulations.
However, it was Peterson, the duck hunter, who did most of the grenade lobbing at that meeting, referring to small wetlands as “no damned good.” Some call that pandering, but judge for yourself.
The Minnesota congressman is a member of the Congressional Sportsman’s Caucus (CSC) and portrays himself as a friend of sportsmen. But you can’t have it both ways. To paraphrase Aldo Leopold, you can’t love ducks and hate small wetlands.
Peterson either doesn’t understand the role of small wetlands in duck production, or he is pandering.
As such, you have to wonder why a caucus that purports to guard the interests of sportsmen has a membership that includes nearly all of the worst conservation voters of both parties.
A few years back, its chairman was none other than Collin Peterson.
