Peter Ward was horn, raised and has lived on the shores of Lake Manitoba for the past seventy one years. During this time, he has been a student of waterfowl and waterfowling while keeping a vigilant eye on the Delta Waterfowl and Wetland? Research Station, the Delta Marsh and the surrounding prairie region He has seen the coining and the complete domination of modern agriculture He has seen the ducks disappear and he has seen the recent explosion in predator populations. What follows are his thoughts on the role predators play in today's waterfowl world. "No one likes to deliberately kill predators for the sake of killing. Thus, among the millions of human predators who seek and kill ducks, few kill predators. Therefore, if we are unwilling to curtail human mortality, we must find ways and means to curtail predator mortality on ducks. Perhaps nothing can illustrate this more graphically than the 15 percent of hen mallards who are now successful in getting off a brood in prairie Canada A nesting success rate at which the mallard can only grow fewer

Over She last three years, in an attempt to discover the real impact of predators on the nesting waterfowl, Delta has earned out work to determine duck response to predator free /ones on the Delta Marsh. What we have found is that with proper marsh management and predator removal, the results are managed waterfowl units brimming with ducks where only four years ago predators eliminated virtually all nesting efforts.

DUCKS BREEDING ON MANAGED AREAS AFTER PREDATOR REMOVAL

Excerpt from North American Wildlife Foundation newsletter, Summer, 1991.