Ducks Unlimited Canada

According to waterfowl biologists, 35 species of ducks, six species of geese and three species of swans depend on wetlands in Canada and the United States. Each one of these species requires some special habitat ingredient in the environment in order to thrive. Organizations concerned about Canada's wildlife resources, such as Ducks Unlimited, are in business to ensure the special ingredients are not lost, but rather are augmented by man.

Ducks Unlimited Canada is a private, non-profit organization financially supported by nearly 700,000 conservation-minded persons in Canada and the United States to preserve waterfowl as a recreational resource.

From 40 offices across Canada, over 350 Ducks Unlimited engineering specialists, biologists and administrators focus their attention on designing, building and operating dykes, channels, dams, nesting islands, and water level control structures to provide ducks with nesting, feeding and brood rearing habits.

Since 1938, the organization has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to develop, manage and maintain nearly 4,000 wetland improvement projects. Total area under some form of development protection exceeds four million acres. Of this, over two million acres have actually been developed through the co-operation of private landowners, who provide land access and through provincial and federal government designation of large tracts of public lands as reserved waterfowl habitat. 

Typical "Marsh Maestro" of Canada's Wetlands Protected by Ducks Unlimited.
The Ducks Unlimited concept was fostered by a growing anxiety among waterfowlers in the United States and Canada over declining continental waterfowl populations in the early decades of the century which had reached a crisis during the prairie drought of the 1930s. It was realized that at least 70 per cent of North American waterfowl was produced in Canada, mostly on the western prairies. Therefore, public and private money raised to enhance waterfowl production had to be spent in Canada for greatest impact.

Two organizations were incorporated in 1937; Ducks Unlimited Inc. in the United States, to collect money from waterfowl hunters, and Ducks Unlimited Canada, to convert the funds into improvements of the waterfowl habitat.

Head office for the Canadian organization was established in Winnipeg on April 1, 1938 with a budget of $100,000 for the year. Work on the first project, Big Grass Marsh, 80 miles northwest of Winnipeg, was begun on April 21 of the same year.

Preoccupation with drought initially gave the organization a strong engineering orientation that spurred an effort to build as many water retention basins as possible. In more recent years, as commercial land use in Canada expanded and intensified to the detriment of waterfowl breeding habitat, equal attention was given to waterfowl biology and marshland management techniques.

Ducks Unlimited Canada, with its combination of civil and hydrological engineers, wetland and upland biologists and agriculturists, is now recognized as the most multi-discipline wildlife conservation organization in Canada. Ducks Unlimited is a conservation venture, not an environmental lobby group, and is equipped accordingly.

Ducks Unlimited Canada has established major scale wetlands conservation agreements with the provincial and territorial governments, and works closely with all agencies, organizations, corporations and individuals actively and seriously striving to improve natural conditions for migratory waterfowl production.