Conservation takes flight

By Mark Biddlecomb

Ducks Unlimited, Inc.’s (DU) mission is to conserve, restore and manage wetlands and associated habitats for North America’s waterfowl. It’s DU’s vision to have wetlands sufficient to fill the skies with waterfowl today, tomorrow and forever.

What then, does DU and California Rice have in common? Well, a lot! If you’ve ever been to, worked on or even driven by a flooded rice field in winter, you may have seen thousands of waterfowl either wheeling in the sky above or feeding in the flooded field.

Wetlands and winter-flooded rice are very important for the food resources they provide to the millions of ducks and geese that winter in the Central Valley. Wetlands provide a wide variety of food resources including a variety of seeds and invertebrates and also provide shelter for resting birds. However, in many areas of the Central Valley, there are not enough wetlands to fully provide the food needed by our wintering waterfowl.

That’s where rice comes in. In some basins, over 50 percent of the food resources necessary to sustain our ducks and geese through the winter months comes in the form of rice left over after fields have been harvested.

Ducks Unlimited is science based. And science tells us that given the current number of wetlands available, without winter flooded rice fields waterfowl would be running out of food well before they are ready to migrate back to their breeding grounds in the north. Ducks in the Central Valley need rice!

And as rice growers know, winter flooding has other benefits. Flooding and the subsequent use by waterfowl help to break down rice straw. And many winter-flooded rice fields are also leased for waterfowl hunting. This provides growers with a little extra income and hunters (many of whom are DU members) with an opportunity to hunt private lands. Hunting on some rice fields can be excellent, given the right location, weather and other factors. Blinds can be in high demand and this is a good indication of the interest people have in hunting winter-flooded rice.

These are challenging times and we all need to work together. Congress seems bent on letting conservation programs whither on the vine and with the world population just hitting the seven billion mark, our natural and agricultural resources are being stretched ever thinner. Ducks Unlimited has worked with many rice growers in areas that are potentially threatened by urban expansion to protect their operations with agricultural easements. Funding for these easements is becoming ever harder to come by, but we continue to work with our funding partners to ensure they know the importance of rice. Federal conservation programs, water quality issues such as methyl mercury, nutrient and pesticide loads and water availability are all issues that DU and the California Rice Commission coordinate and work closely on together.

Conservation is defined by Merriam-Webster as the: …planned management of a natural resource to prevent exploitation, destruction, or neglect. Ducks Unlimited and California rice growers both fit that bill and working together we can keep rice on the table and California’s skies filled with waterfowl, too!

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Mark Biddlecomb is Director of the Ducks Unlimited Western Regional Office. For more information about DU, log on to ducks.org.