By Jason Fleener, WDNR Wetland Habitat Specialist
This article originally appeared in Wisconsin Waterfowl Association’s August Newsletter edition.
2020 Wisconsin Waterfowl Stamp by Robert Metropulos of Arbor Vitae, WI. Photo courtesy WDNR
We are now in the Fiscal Year (FY)20-21 State Duck Stamp project cycle. Fourteen waterfowl habitat related proposals from across the state were approved for roughly $600K in funding for the biennium, with a few more projects that could be approved, pending funding availability in FY21. Allow me to back-up to explain the Duck Stamp funding process and how we got there.
All waterfowl hunters who hunt in Wisconsin are required to purchase a $7 Waterfowl Stamp hunt authorization with their license. These funds go into a special ear-marked account that is intended for waterfowl habitat, as outlined in state statute s. 29.191(1). A majority of the funding (67%) is dedicated to “developing, managing, preserving, restoring and maintaining wetland habitat and for producing waterfowl and ecologically related species in Wisconsin.” These funds are awarded through a competitive application process in which Non Government Organizations (NGOs), DNR property managers, and other units of government are eligible to apply. The applications are then reviewed and scored by members of theDNR’s Migratory Game Bird Advisory Committee. Applicants who sit on the committee are recused from scoring their own applications. The committee takes several criteria into consideration as they evaluate and recommend projects for funding. Some of those criteria include geographic waterfowl habitat priorities, cost-effectiveness, expected waterfowl productivity or use, and ecological values. The committee will then meet once every two years to discuss the application scores and talk over the details of the proposals. Many applicants will propose a cost-sharing scenario to support project costs to leverage funding and make the Duck Stamp dollar go further. The committee sometimes will recommend funding projects for less than the requested amount from Duck Stamp. Based on available funding, the committee will recommend a subset of the applications for whole or partial funding to the DNR’s Wildlife Leadership Team who gives the final approval.
Most applications submitted are from DNR managers for impoundment infrastructure work or wetland restorations on state wildlife areas. DNR manages over 1,000 impounded wetlands across the state, of which the cumulative miles of dikes, berms and levees would stretch from Green Bay to the Twin Cities. Duck Stamp is an important source to help maintain this infrastructure, but only provides a small fraction of funding that would be needed to properly manage all waterfowl impoundments over time. Popular hunting destinations that have invested Duck Stamp money into wetland infrastructure have included state properties like the Mead Wildlife Area, Navarino Wildlife Area, Horicon Wildlife Area, Grand River Marsh, and Crex Meadows.
NGOs and other units of government have competed well for funding. This includes WWA’s legacy of applying for and receiving Duck Stamp funds for wetlands restoration projects across the state for several years. While hunters can hunt on and enjoy the sites that are managed with Duck Stamp on public lands, an important niche exists to restore wetlands on private lands where most of the restorable wetlands and waterfowl production potential exist within the state. This is where partners like WWA step in. To make a case for private lands work to the Duck Stamp buyer, by the time duck season comes around these ducks are seldom still sticking around the private lands where the nesting and brooding occurred. All DNR and cooperator stamp project managers are responsible for spending the funds in a timely manner within the scope of their proposals and reporting their accomplishments.
A Portage County project completed by WWA in 2016 with Duck Stamp dollars.
Check out the DNR’s updated Waterfowl Management page to view some stories of completed Duck Stamp projects from across the state.
If you’re keeping track, the remaining 33% of Duck Stamp revenues are dedicated to waterfowl propagation areas within the Mississippi Flyway portion of Canada. These funds are awarded to conservation organizations who can deliver the work. In recent years, Ducks Unlimited and their sister organization DU Canada, and Delta Waterfowl Foundation and their partner Manitoba 
Habitat Heritage Corporation, have carried out this work. For several decades, Wisconsin’s Duck Stamp dollars have been sent to the prairie pothole and parklands region of southwest Manitoba. This region contains some of the highest densities of potholes and waterfowl production on the continent. Yet, this area is under threat of drainage and degradation in an intensively farmed landscape. In 2016, I had the opportunity to travel to this region with former DNR Deputy Secretary, Kurt Thiede, and regional DU staff to check out the work that DU Canada is doing with Wisconsin’s Duck Stamp dollars. DU Canada’s habitat program is a very comprehensive and strategic approach to working with farmers and landowners across the landscape. They demonstrated to us several properties enrolled in cost-effective programs that allow farmers to keep land in production while implementing waterfowl-friendly conservation practices, including their winter wheat program, conservation grazing program and conservation haying program. Other programs had more emphasis on land protection, including conservation easements for potholes and grassland areas on private lands and wetland restorations. I was impressed with their work and saw hundreds of ducks along the way. While most ducks that are harvested in Wisconsin are reared in Wisconsin, the importance of supporting conservation work in Canada cannot be understated. The Wisconsin Duck Stamp dollar is leveraged four-fold with dollars from conservation organizations and North American Wetlands Conservation Act (NAWCA) funding or habitat work in Canada. Wisconsin is not alone in this effort, as 80%-90% of other states are also sending state dollars to various parts of Canada in a given year. The securement of state funds for Canada indirectly enables the NAWCA program to fully function in the U.S., in which Wisconsin alone has received over $35 million for habitat work in-state since the inception of the program. For hunters who bag species like Canvasback, Redhead and Pintail along the Mississippi River and many of Wisconsin’s big lakes, there is a good probability those birds came from the prairie potholes of Canada.