Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
MANAGEMENT APPROACH
The success in Ducks Unlimited's management comes about through marrying gen-
eral ecological science with important technology tools, particularly geographic
information systems (GIS) and remote sensing, that enable it to deliver its work. The
approach helps Ducks Unlimited to target its conservation areas to specifically track
the delivery of its conservation work, including monitoring compliance, gauging the
effectiveness of its programs, determining emerging problems at the landscape scale,
and quantifying all accomplishments. By walking and not just talking conservation,
Ducks Unlimited, through its ongoing quantitative self-assessments of projects, is
able to build what it refers to as a “competitive discriminator” in the conservation
marketplace by attracting partners for its restoration work (Young and Batt 2004).
And this tool has, in turn, proven helpful for marketing conservation needs in terms
of fostering an ability to communicate to the public at large about the vital ecological
significance of wetlands.
An example from the prairies in the center of North America, which again also
happen to be one of Ducks Unlimited's number-one priority areas for conservation
delivery, can help to illustrate the management approach. Although many often think
on a day-to-day basis of far-off exotic places as being of particular significance, the
prairie pothole region is one of the world's most significant wetland regions in terms
of supporting waterfowl (Young and Batt 2004). Rainforest areas of South America
and the Iraqi marshes are also of ecological significance, but the prairie pothole
region of Canada and the United States represents the most important waterfowl
habitat for grassland- and wetland-associated species in the entire world. It is, there-
fore, just as important for North Americans to make sure that this is not taken for
granted as it is for Iraqis in relation to their own marshland ecosystem. Likewise, the
challenge for the worldwide wetland conservation community (and also for Ducks
Unlimited as an organization) is to recognize that these pothole ecosystems are areas
that are under tremendous threat. This pothole area, despite some of the environmen-
tal conservation protection measures and restoration efforts in place, is, like the Iraqi
marshes, still under tremendous siege.
The biggest threat to the prairie pothole region today, as it was in the central
California basin throughout most of the last century, as well as to the Iraqi marshes
in pre-Saddam days, is abutting agricultural development (Figure 10.1). On a day-to-
day basis, these pothole areas are being converted from grasslands and wetlands into
soybean fields. So how does Ducks Unlimited effectively deal with these problems
in a prairie setting given the international significance of this area as constituting one
of the most significant ecological settings in the entire world?
The prairie pothole region is characterized by the juxtaposition of abundant and
diverse wetlands on a landscape covered with grasslands. Waterfowl and a variety
of other wetland-dependent species, including shore birds, are very much attracted
to such a complex land mosaic (Forman 1998). In these settings, birds are attracted
to the water (Figure 10.2), but what allows them to be successful is the abundance of
grasslands (Young and Batt 2004). When over 40 percent of the landscape is incred-
ibly productive grasslands, this must form the basis of what guides the management
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