News Release

For Immediate Release

October 10, 2006

USDA Helps You Improve Wildlife Habitat

Did you know that technical help as well as financial incentives are available to private landowners to help plan, install and maintain conservation measures, including those that improve wildlife habitat? USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service’s Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program (WHIP) is a voluntary program for people who want to develop and improve wildlife habitat on their land.

Upland grasslands in close proximity to wetlands are critical for waterfowl, but much of the habitat was destroyed in the last century with the conversion of about half of America’s wetlands. In the past 15 years, thought, with assistance from USDA and other programs, landowners have restored thousands of acres of wetlands and waterfowl populations have responded. Individual species have specific food and cover preferences, but included here is some general guidance on their habitat needs.

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Food preferences. Ducks, geese, swans and other waterfowl eat plants – mostly aquatic

– and seeds and insects. Crop fields can draw thousands of waterfowl in the fall, to eat corn, soybeans, wheat, and other cereal grains. A wide variety of aquatic plants and seeds includes pondweed, smartweed, sedges, and rushes. In early spring, hens eat insects for protein needed to produce eggs; their young also eat mostly insect and other small animals in their first three weeks of life.

Dabbling and diving ducks. Ducks can be grouped into two feeding types: dabbling and diving ducks. Dabbling ducks, including mallards, wood ducks and blue-winged teal, usually feed in shallow water by tipping up on the surface. Divers, including mergansers and goldeneye, feed by diving to get submerged plants and aquatic organisms.

Cover needs. Wetland types important to waterfowl include wooded swamps, marshes, wet meadows, river backwaters and bays in large lakes. Wetlands with about half their surface area covered by wetland plants are ideal for waterfowl broods. Idle grasslands, deferred pastures and haylands not mowed until after nesting in July, are the upland habitat many waterfowl use to nest.

Many species migrate southward, but some stay in winter if food and open water are available.

For more information, visit a Natural Resources Conservation Service office located in your local Agricultural Service Center or the NRCS home page at www.nrcs.usda.gov.

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