As temperatures grow colder, ducks and other waterfowl retrace their yearly flightpath south. Meanwhile, hunters around Wisconsin set early alarms, place their decoys and witness the migration.
Taylor Finger is a game bird ecologist at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. He said his career fits his personal interests well.
“I was helping carry my dad’s decoys before I could actually shoot, so I ended up getting a pretty solid job,” Finger said.
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Well into Wisconsin’s waterfowl hunting season, WPR’s Larry Meiller sat down with Finger to talk about waterfowl conservation.
Listen to the rest of the interview for a discussion about waterfowl hunting and to hear Brad Heidel of the Wisconsin Waterfowl Association talk about his organization’s conservation goals.
The following was edited for brevity and clarity.
Larry Meiller: Why is it so important to survey and keep an eye on waterfowl populations?
Taylor Finger: It’s critical when it comes to any game species, because you are targeting and hunting these birds, so you’re removing them.
It is our responsibility as well to ensure that we’re monitoring and that what we’re doing in terms of harvest is actually management, so we’re not negatively affecting the resource.
LM: Tell us the results of this year’s breeding bird population survey. Are numbers increasing, decreasing, staying the same?
TF: For spring of 2025 we were up about seven percent from 2024 with about 565,000 birds.
Generally it was pretty good. Our mallard counts were up a little bit. Our wood ducks were essentially exactly the same as what we had been seeing. Our Canada geese were down a little bit, and our teal were down about 15 percent. Our other ducks made up a huge chunk of it, because we’ve been flying that survey earlier and earlier, because we haven’t had much of a winter lately.
LM: What are the biggest threats to waterfowl populations?
TF: Habitat is the primary one in terms of land conversion. You can’t blame our farmers out there. They’re just trying to make a living too. But a lot of land is being tiled. A lot of what was historical grassland habitat is now being turned into agriculture.
There’s a lot of stuff happening with regard to the impacts of climate and the amount of wetlands that are going to be available if those birds don’t ultimately have to go all the way as far south as they historically used to. So that’s going to be a factor in the upcoming years, for sure.
LM: How has bird flu affected our waterfowl?
TF: What we know is that waterfowl, primarily, are regular carriers of influenza, and they are probably the culprit in terms of transporting it across the landscape. However, the nice thing is they are very resilient to avian influenza.
