Flight of fancy from ducky to yucky
At each end of the Duck Highway, two worlds connected by flight are split into a pair of heaven-and-hell landscapes.
Anybody who loves nature probably would be both ecstatic and aghast at the news revealed this past week from these two locations.
Deep in the prairie of Alberta, several members of the California Waterfowl Association ventured into the heart of the richest waterfowl breeding grounds in the hemisphere. They joined waterfowl experts from North Dakota’s Delta Waterfowl Foundation.
At North America’s “duck factory,” the prairie wetlands and potholes of South Dakota, North Dakota, and Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services estimated there are 49.5 million ducks. That is up again from last year, and 43 percent higher than the longterm average over the past 60 years.
The habitat benefits other migratory shorebirds and waterfowl and has led to high numbers as well for hundreds of other species. It’s an amazing scene this weekend as this year’s hatches reach maturity and prepare to fly south for the winter.
Meanwhile, it’s grim in California. The Sacramento Valley, the end point on the Pacific Flyway for 5 million waterfowl, has few places waiting for those birds to land; that is, to rest, feed and water. Intense crowding can result in stress, disease and lower survival rates.
Of the six wildlife refuges that make up the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge Complex, four are 99 percent dry. They are Colusa, Sutter, Butte Sink and Llano Seco. Of the two that have water, Sacramento has only 17 percent wetlands and Delevan has 22 percent.
An aerial survey last week by wildlife biologists across the 35,000-acre complex counted only 342 geese, 9,212 mallards and 119,782 ducks. There were no white-fronted, Ross, snow, Aleutian or cackling geese. None.
The number of breeding mallards, the most numerous resident duck species in California, has declined 27 percent from last year, according to the Department of Fish and Wildlife. Statewide, the number of breeding ducks in California is 315,580, down from 448,750 last year, which was already a down year.
These two worlds, the rich waterfowl habitat in Canada’s prairie, and the drought-stricken, brown stubble of the Sacramento Valley, will merge as the ducks and geese fly south on the Pacific Flyway.
When they reach California, you wonder if they will have any place to land.
History shows that the majority of migratory birds fly south by Thanksgiving. Yet even in El Niño weather years, the type of rain totals that flood wetlands usually do not arrive until December.
Water-delivery cutbacks in the next month mean the refuges will have large areas that do not get flooded. And rice farmers will get little water. When water is available, rice farmers provide vast expanses of wetland habitat when they flood fields to “decomp” rice stalks, instead of burning or plowing them.
This is one of the strangest paradoxes in nature ever told. I have flown over the waterfowl breeding areas in North Dakota, with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and in the Sacramento Valley, with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and have seen these landscapes and habitats in all conditions.
An aerial view of the two worlds can evoke an emotional response that could not be more jubilant or wretched, respectively, depending on what you see.
On both ends of the Duck Highway, both good and bad, the situation now is beyond comprehension.
Ka-boom and other stories
The Department of Fish and Wildlife had two disasters last week and one great victory:
Ka-boom: Out of Santa Cruz, no explanation has been provided for what caused an explosion that blew up a patrol skiff and burned it to something resembling charcoal. Two game wardens were ejected into the water, where another patrol skiff rescued them. They will be OK, DFW says.
Trout suffocated: At the American River Hatchery, 155,000 rainbow trout died in minutes when a huge slug of algal slime was released from Folsom Dam and then stopped up water intakes at the hatchery and fried the water chillers. The culprit, I’m told, is that the Bureau of Reclamation had just switched water releases to a pipe that had not been used in years. DFW Director Chuck Bonham will consider asking the Bureau to replace the fish. Quarantine lifted: After a fourth-month quarantine at the Mount Shasta Trout Hatchery, plants will resume in the north state after 1.1 million fish were ruled diseasefree. Only 2,500 trout, mostly 2-inchers and brought in from another hatchery, were found with Whirling Disease and destroyed.
Briefly
About your letters: I read every letter sent to me, the good, the bad and the ugly, and wish I could engage in a discussion with each person who writes. My travel and writing schedule make that impossible. Some result in feature items. My favorites are the ones with stories, like a yarn spun at a campfire, something of a lost art in the age of electronic clicking. I print them and like to read them after a camp dinner, what we call “hunkering down.” For those who have written me and did not get the response you were hoping for, try to have faith that I read your letter, perhaps while sitting in the wilderness against a tree. Commonwealth Club: The Commonwealth Club of California has invited me to present “The Wilder Side of Life” 6 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 23, in San Francisco. I’ll talk about some of my near-death encounters, expeditions to find Bigfoot and other ghosts, as well as my favorite locations to hike, bike, camp, fish, boat, trek, climb, track wildlife and take pictures, along with a preview of the next big trek. Tickets at http://www.common wealthclub.org.