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Astro-Ducks Enter Canadian Prairies with California Souvenirs 
Oak Hammock Marsh, Manitoba, March 29, 2000-The first of fifty-two female northern pintail ducks, which were fitted with satellite transmitters while wintering in California, have started to cross the Canada-United States border on their migration to breeding grounds on Canada's Prairies and northwards. Satellite information on the ducks will complement existing Ducks Unlimited research designed to identify why pintail populations have decreased when most other duck populations have been doing very well.
The Tuscany Research Institute in Nevada has funded the pilot study with a private grant to Ducks Unlimited. This project has united biologists from Ducks Unlimited's research arm, the Institute for Wetland and Waterfowl Research (IWWR), with researchers from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and the California Waterfowl Association.
According to Mike Anderson, Canadian director of IWWR, pintails were once almost as numerous as mallards, the most common duck on the Prairies.
"In the mid-1950s, there were 10.3 million pintails and 10.4 million mallards. In the past 50 years, the number of pintails have declined and are now fluctuating around three million birds," Anderson said. The birds are a concern to waterfowl biologists across North America who have witnessed their decline, but have not yet identified all the factors that explain why. Two types of transmitters are being evaluated in this first year of the study: internal transplants that weigh about 25 grams and external back-packs that weigh about 20 grams. Each transmitter weighs less than three per cent of the bird's body mass. The signals from the transmitters are sent to an American National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite. This information is downloaded and sent as an e-mail message to scientists with the USGS. The message indicates the date and time the information was generated and the location of the bird in terms of latitude and longitude.
The study will provide information on migration routes, important feeding and resting points, and key breeding grounds in Alaska, southern Alberta and Saskatchewan and northwards.
"We'll gain a better understanding of the habitats used by pintails during migration," Anderson said, "and we'll also be able to see where California pintails are breeding." Fewer pintails have been recorded in the Prairies over the past few years, leading people to question if the birds are heading further north in search of better breeding habitat.
Threats to pintails on the Prairies include wetland habitat loss, the conversion of grassland to cropland and nest predation. Scientists hope to eventually develop a continental conservation plan for pintails that will help turn around their population decline.
