Ducks Unlimited

By automobile, boat, blimp, bombing plane, autogiro and snowshoe, agents of the Bureau of Biological Survey, game wardens, State police, collegians and private volunteers have for months been quietly scouting lakes, ponds, marshes and ocean inlets from Canada to Mexico. Last week the Biological Survey announced their findings. They had counted some 9,500,000 wild ducks and geese, estimated as one-quarter of the North American wildfowl population. For 5,000,000 U. S. wildfowlers that was cheering news. It marked the second consecutive year of duck increase. Duck Recovery to oldtime abundance, however, was still a long way off.

Toward the duck renaissance, progress should be made by a new conservation body incorporated in the U. S. last January and in Canada last week. Its name: Ducks Unlimited.

In Manhattan seven years ago a group of sportsmen and businessmen organized More Game Birds in America, Inc., early realized that, so far as ducks were concerned, conservation in the U. S. was only a fraction of their problem. Not overshooting, but destruction of breeding grounds by agriculture and drought was the prime cause of duck decrease. And approximately 80% of all ducks shot in the U. S. breed in Canada--chiefly on the prairies of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. In 1935 More Game Birds surveyed the Canadian region, saw what needed to be done. This year it is ready with a well-rounded program to sell to U. S. duck hunters.

Ducks Unlimited wants 1,000,000 Canadian acres for its duck preserve. It expects to get most land by grant, lease or easement, but will buy when necessary. First thing nesting ducks need is plenty of water, and Ducks Unlimited, tying in with Canada's prairie farms rehabilitation program, will scatter its lands with dams, dikes, ditches. After the engineers will come a permanent corps of wardens, biologists, breeding experts. They will see that ducks get plenty of food and cover, will fight against botulism and other epidemics which sweep duck populations. They will destroy the crows, cats, coyotes and magpies which prey on ducks, ducklings and duck eggs. They will set up duck factories, plants of incubators and brooders where ducklings may be hatched by hundreds of thousands.

With this ambitious but entirely practicable vision, Ducks Unlimited has in three months enlisted thousands of sportsmen throughout the land, set up active recruiting committees in 35 States. Four Canadian directors of the organization have been selected, four U. S. directors will soon be named. Frederick Hudson Ecker, president of Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., has agreed to serve as treasurer of Ducks Unlimited, spending $600,000 per year for five years. Already enough has been pledged so that, when the ice goes out of Canadian lakes late this spring, Ducks Unlimited can set to work to make its name come true.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.