In Midwest Duck Blinds, Visions of Global Warming

[RamboLiberal]

After 32 years of hunting ducks in the wetlands of Missouri, Chuck Geier knows when temperatures will drop and waters will freeze. That means he also knows when the birds will fly and hunting will be best.

Except that much of what he knows is now in question.

“It used to be by Dec. 6, this place was frozen,” said Mr. Geier, 51, a national sales manager for a telecommunications company. “That’s not true anymore.”

From the “prairie potholes” of Canada and the upper Midwest to the destination states of Arkansas and Louisiana, the rhythms of the cross-continental migratory bird route known as the Mississippi Flyway are changing.

In Missouri, where the average winter temperature has been rising, hunters say birds are arriving later and sticking around longer before bolting for warmer redoubts. Elsewhere, wetlands are not freezing over the way they once did.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/11/us/11hunting.html?hp

[madrchsod]

1. we have had ducks and geese

staying around this part of northern il since 1963-4. now in 2007 there are larger flocks staying.

[mac2]

2. Ducks stay in the MW

I see it also in the N. IL area. Duck preserves (Horicon, WI) in WI have hunters waiting on them so they fly into the Milwaukee park areas. Seems they aren't stupid. I know the flocks are less in the last fifteen years. I used to hear huge flocks of them flying over our home in the fall. Now I see small flocks of say twenty or so. Is it a change in routes, hunters, or climate killing them?

Climatology science does have cycles of ten or twenty years (you see it in tree rings..if they are large trees left). The averages are different than prior times and changing quickly. It seems to be more extreme hot to cold, wet to dry, etc.

As the American poet Robert Frost wrote, “Some say the world will end in fire; some say in ice.” Either, he notes, “would suffice.”

[greenvpi]

3. Finally something positive comes from GW

Less ducks killed by those thugs!

[malakai2]

4. Well...

Much of the money used to purchase conservation easements in the Prairie Pothole region, much of the lobbying for protection of breeding habitat there and elsewhere, and much of the private effort to conserve species numbers is a direct result of waterfowl hunter involvement. Otherwise, most of what is currently left of the Prairie Potholes would have been plowed under by landowners to take advantage of the high corn prices brought on by the ethanol swindle.

Losing a small percentage of individual ducks to hunters as a cost of protecting the species seems reasonable to me. Otherwise, why bother caring about the environment, biodiversity, etc.? We could just hold some Disney notion of nature, see Bambi everywhere, and then without some form of active management, lose species in our lifetime...I don't really think that is reasonable.