Survey finds fewer North Dakota ducks

BISMARCK, N.D. — The North Dakota Game and Fish Department’s 77th annual spring breeding duck survey conducted in May showed an index of about 2.9 million birds, down from 3.4 million last year.

The 2024 breeding duck index was the 30th highest on record and stands at 17 percent above the long-term (1948-2023) average, according to Mike Szymanski, migratory game bird supervisor for Game and Fish in Bismarck.

“By and large, all species were flat to down. Mallards, for instance, were down about 19 percent, pintails were down about 29 percent and blue-winged teal down roughly 13 percent,” he said. “These species being down from last year is one thing, but when you compare it back to what we consider to be one of our best periods for breeding ducks in North Dakota (1994-2016), we’re down a lot more than that. So, overall, mallards, pintails, blue-winged teal, gadwall, wigeon and northern shovelers are down anywhere from 24 percent to 49 percent from that 1994 to 2016 time period.”

Szymanski said the decline in breeding duck numbers has a lot to do with the loss of land enrolled in the federal Conservation Reserve Program and perennial grasses on the landscape used for nesting cover by ducks.

“While our overall duck population count this year was about 2.9 million birds, that hardly compares to 5.4 million in 2002, our record-high,” he said. “So, we’re down considerably and were getting into this realm of a lower average where we probably won’t be above 3 million breeding ducks very often based on our landscape conditions.”

As always, spring was interesting, as Szymanski and crew run more than 1,800 miles of transects counting wetlands and waterfowl down to the species and social grouping on both sides of the road. This spring, the wetland count was the 32nd highest out of 77 years.

“Coming out of winter, we were certainly quite dry after having a mostly open winter across the state, but it rained a fair bit in the 30 days leading up to our survey, so that kept it from being really dry,” Szymanski said. “At the time of our survey, wetland conditions were considered ‘fair.’ We had a lot of new water on the landscape during the survey that really wasn’t there when ducks were moving through.”