One of my favorite outdoor publications is not one of the standard "hook-andbullet" magazines, though I do my share of reading between their pages, too. For those who are hungry for hunting and fishing information, plus an understandi ng of the many other dimensions of Min- nesota's outdoors, it's hard to beat the homeg rown Minnesota Conservation Volunteer.

The Volunteer can be ordered as a free subscription publication from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. But for those who know that there's really no such thing as a free lunch, donations are encouraged to help defray expenses. Paid gift subscriptions are also available. You can even read the Volunteer online, at www.dnr.state.mn.us/volunteer.

Now to the point at hand. For those who are looking eagerly ahead to the 2009 waterfowl hunting season, the September-October Volunteer has a very thought-provoking article on the future of duck production in the Midwest. It's not a forecast for the season ahead, but a forecast for years down the road, if present predictions of climate change come true. Believe it or not, these forecasts suggest that the Midwestern climate most favorable for producing ducks in the future may be found in Minnesota. Wouldn't that be a good thing? Probably not, for reasons that will be explained.

Some might question whether global warming is real, citing this, one of the 10 coolest Minnesota summers on record. There were even frost warnings over much of central and northern Minnesota on the last day of August. But global warming theories don't predict that all parts of the earth will be warmer all of the time. They predict that average global temperatures will rise, and that local and regional patterns of moisture and temperature will change. These forecasts

assume that humans won't

act to reduce heat-retaining "greenhouse gases," like

carbon dioxide, ozone and others. Maybe we will.

But if we don't, and if the climate change forecasts are close to being accurate, the Volunteer article - written by the much-respected journalist Mike Furtman - states that there will be an eastward shift in the most suitable duck producing habitat. North and South Dakota have in my lifetime been the best duck producers south of the Canadian border. But they're predicted by the end of this century to have milder winters, earlier springs and warmer and drier summers. And fewer ducks produced.

In such a climate-changed future, western Minnesota is predicted to have a climate wetter and more favorable to duck production than the Dakotas. The trouble with that, says a professor of ecology at South Dakota State University, who is quoted in the article, is that most of the wetlands in western Minnesota have been drained, and grassland nesting cover tilled. Minnesota has lost roughly 90 percent of its original wetlands and grasslands, compared to neighboring North Dakota, which has lost about 50 percent.

The Minnesota DNR in 2006, released its Long Range Duck Recovery Plan, which set the ambitious goal of increasing the annual Minnesota breeding population of ducks from about 650,000 to one million birds by 2056. To do this the DNR estimated it would have to add an average of about 40,000 acres of wetlands and grasslands per year for 50 years, about 30 percent of it wetlands, 70 percent adjacent upland nesting cover.

I am an optimist by nature, but that is an amazingly optimistic vision, inasmuch as the plan states that over half of the additional 40,000 wetland and grassland habitat acres each year will have to be on private land. This is the case because there is only so much publicly owned land to manage, and very limited tax resources or legislative appetite for purchasing more, especially if doing so would take those acres off the tax rolls.

This ambitious goal is going to depend heavily on federal programs that give financial incentives for rural landowners to preserve or restore wetlands, and to keep acres in grassland, rather than plant them to crops, or divert them to other profitable uses, such as residential or commercial development. The current best example is the Conservation Reserve Program, or CRP, which provides a financial incentive to take farmland out of production and keep it in grassland or other cover plantings. CRP has done wonders for duck production in the Dakotas, and pheasant production here in Minnesota.

Yet such incentives, too, have a cost in tax dollars. This was clearly seen in the 2008 federal farm bill, in which lawmakers trimmed the maximum nationwide CRP land enrollment from 39 million acres to 32 million. That's seven million fewer acres producing ducks, pheasants and the other wildlife that thrive on these idled acres. Simple economics also plays a role in whether farmers even consider keeping eligible land in CRP. High crop prices provide an incentive to till and plant. Minnesota experienced a net loss of some 40,000 grassland acres in 2008 for just this reason, and there are predictions that another 700,000 acres could be lost to landowner decisions not to enroll eligible acres in CRP over the next five years.

On the plus side, there are programs like the federal Wetlands Reserve Program, which in tandem with the state's Reinvest in Minnesota (RIM) program has recently been enrolling 10,000 acres or more per year in perpetual conservation easements, which give landowners cash for preserving quality habitat and providing some public access. If this sounds like a win some-lose some game, it is. The goal of two million more acres of combined wetland and grassland over 50 years (2056) will not be reached if the gains are offset, or exceeded, by annual acreage lost.

If you believe that a picture can be worth a thousand words, there is a graphic illustration accompanying that Volunteer article that shows the changes in land use surrounding one of Minnesota's most legendary waterfowling destinations, Heron Lake in southern Minnesota's Jackson County. The depiction of the landscape in 1892, is dotted with lakes and wetlands of all sizes, so many that the map is almost half blue. The image of Heron Lake area today shows almost no wetlands other than the main lake. The rest has been drained. Great for farming, which we obviously need, too, but awful for ducks.

How we're going to halt this trend and preserve the quality habitat we have today is a big challenge. Adding two million acres over the next 50 years, much more so. It's a good thing that a lot of duck hunters are incurable optimists, who don't dwell on how bad things are, but try to imagine and work for how good they might be.