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Delta Waterfowl Testifies in Congress to Support HEN ACT.
deltawaterfowl.org
Dr. Frank Rohwer appears before House subcommittee to back a proposed law that would fund important duck production and habitat conservation programs.
Dr. Frank Rohwer, president and chief scientist of Delta Waterfowl, testified today before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries on H.R. 6854, which is known the Habitat Enhancement Now or HEN Act.
the HEN Act would authorize $3 million annually to enhance duck production in the prairie pothole region through the installation and maintenance of Hen Houses and to develop nesting and brood habitat in California.
“Waterfowl populations are driven by what happens on the breeding grounds,” Rohwer said during his testimony. “So that’s why I’m excited about this bill. For 40 years, we’ve known that the breeding grounds are declining. We’re losing wetlands. With the intensification of agriculture, we get greater habitat fragmentation and a changed predator community. It’s tough for ducks to survive. The vast majority of eggs laid in the prairie pothole region are eaten by predators. If we want to improve duck populations, we have to work on the breeding grounds and we really need to focus on improving hatch rates.”
In 1991, Delta Waterfowl began installing Hen Houses, which are cylindrical nest structures made of rolled wire stuffed with flax grass and mounted on a pole over the water in semi-permanent wetlands. Decades of research and use have proven that Hen Houses nesting structures cost-effectively increase mallard nest success by keeping the hen and her clutch of eggs out of reach of mammalian nest predators.
“They really work for two reasons,” Rohwer told the subcommittee. “Mallards love them, and they jump in these things and lay eggs. And the second really impressive thing is that the eggs actually hatch. We typically see a 10-fold increase when mallards nest in Hen Houses.”
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