No More Fowling?

"Eventual elimination of wildfowling as a field sport in America is not an impossibility." Thus ominously began a report on The Duck Decline in the Northwest issued last week by the foundation, More

Game Birds in America Inc. Alarming as it was, the statement sounded conservative to U. S. gunners and ammunition makers, already shocked by a rumor spreading throughout the land. The rumor, far graver than those of possible regulatory measures which worried sportsmen last summer (TIME, Aug. 28), was that a Federal ban would next year fall on all duck-shooting in the U. S.

In Washington the Biological Survey scotched the rumor for the present with a curt. "Absolutely nothing to it.'' But the Survey did admit that such a ban has been threatened for some years, might be discussed next summer. Why it may come was the subject of the More Game Birds report.

Because fewer ducks are winging South each season, the Foundation has been inclined to discount the importance of overshooting, modern firearms, lax game law enforcement as causes of duck decline. Last July it sent researchers on a 3400-mi. jaunt through the heart of North America's chief wild duck nursery--the prairies of North Dakota and Montana in the U. S., Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta in Canada--to find out what was happening to the ducks before they started South. The surveyors found the region, from a duck's viewpoint, in a sorry state. Where ducks once thrived and multiplied they were now dying by thousands. Causes: 1) farming; 2) drought. Farmers have drained and ploughed under or turned into grazing larid 80% of the small bodies of water which once dotted the land. Half the rest have dried up. Many a large lake has shrunk or vanished completely. With the water have gone the plants which ducks once used for food or cover.

The agricultural region has become not only inhospitable but actually dangerous to ducks. Rains early in the breeding season encourage them to settle, raise their families on shallow ponds, sloughs and potholes. Then hot, windy weather comes to suck up the water, leaves ducklings fatally high & dry. Falling water levels in larger ponds and lakes foster the decay of organic matter, the growth of microbes which give both young & old ducks botulism, "western duck disease," a form of food poisoning. At Saskatchewan's Johnstone Lake an estimated 150,000 ducks died of this disease during August and September.

To keep ducks & sport from vanishing the report recommends:

1) A thorough mapping of the prairie region for use in an annual census and check-up of breeding conditions.

2) Improvement of productive areas-mainly through maintaining of water levels and restoring of food and cover plants-under the management of trained residents.

3) More duck sanctuaries throughout the U. S.

Teething Ring

In Cincinnati's Zoo last week Superintendent Sol A. Stephan examined the inflamed gums of his two-month-old hippopotamus Zeeko, got her an old automobile tire to use as a teething ring.

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