Patrick Chase
In this episode, Nature Up North Digital Media Intern Pat Chase has a conversation with the former president of the Ducks Unlimited St. Lawrence University chapter Nate Serlin. They discuss hunting, conservation, and the important role that hunters can play in supporting conservation efforts.
Hello and welcome back to naturally speaking, the nature of North Podcast series where we bring in local North Country experts to talk about what's going on in the North Country. Today, we have a very special guest with us. Can you introduce yourself?
My name is Nate Saarland. I'm the President of the Saint Lawrence, or now, I'm the former president of the Saint Lawrence University Ducks and limited chapter, and I'm honored that Pat considers me to be an expert. Really glad to be here.
You are the foremost expert in what we will be talking about today, which is DU conservation and the future of hunting in New York State. Very exciting stuff. Very exciting stuff. So I am of course your host, Pat Chase, Nature Up North Digital media intern.
This will be my final semester with nature of North very sad folks. Very sad, but it's been a blast. It's been a real pleasure with this organization, so we're hoping to go out on a on a good note here. So Mr. Serlin, can you first tell us a little bit about the organization you represent?
Yeah, so, so Ducks Unlimited is the world's leader in wetlands conservation. We're an international organization. There's Ducks Unlimited Canada, Ducks Unlimited de Mexico, and Ducks Unlimited, which represents the US. We've conserved over 16,000,000 acres in our 87 year history now, and Ducks Unlimited is mainly A grassroots based organization with around 5500 chapters across the country. And so we’re you know there there's a college program and there's right around 300 college chapters and Saint Lawrence Universities is just one of those college chapters. We’re one of three college chapters in New York.
So my job is twofold. It's to fundraise on behalf of wetlands conservation for Ducks Unlimited and to carry out the mission of Ducks Limited on campus. So sometimes that looked like we held fundraisers to send money to Ducks Unlimited, but we also did things like tree planting, wild game cookouts, taking new people hunting, all sorts of stuff that involve conservation and consumptive recreation.
So can you tell me a little bit more about, I think you said the tree planting that you guys do, can you tell me and tell the audience a little bit more about sort of that aspect of your organization?
Sure. So Ducks unlimited is, we have a bunch of different conservation programs, but one of the more unique conservation programs we have is this thing called mitigation. So basically, when developers go, obviously when we develop land, there are times that we have to take out wetlands.
But the federal government and state governments require that these wetlands be mitigated or essentially reinstated in other areas. So what happens is the developer goes, and say they're going to develop 10 acres of wetlands.
They then go to Ducks Unlimited and Ducks Unlimited says I'm making up numbers here. Let's say ducks and limits says we need $1000 per acre. In order to recreate the wetlands that you're taking out somewhere else. So the developer who's developing 10 acre of wetlands, he gives ducks unlimited mitigation team $10,000 a $1000 for each acre and they go and put that $10,000 into a mitigation project somewhere else to conserve 10 more acres. So that's one of the that's one of the things that Ducks Unlimited does. That's one of the many ways we do conservation.
Right. And then those are generally we we'll do mitigation work on a project and then that land will be transferred over to either a state agency or to a private kind of trust, land Trust with the idea that it's conserved in perpetuity. So sometimes to save a little bit money and make your dollar go farther, there's opportunities to volunteer at these.
So in the fall we had two different projects that were about a month apart where we planted 1500 trees and then this spring we planted another thousand at another project. So we had three projects that brought us up to 4000 trees this year and I've had a couple of people ask me, why would a wetlands team want to plant trees? Because wetlands and upland habitat, seemingly two different things. But they're actually not.
Having trees in wetlands especially in a tactical way in the way that the biologists like it will hold soil together and hold oxygen in the area and help to separate, create dense cover in and around wetlands which encourage a lot of wetland species to nest and do other things. So actually our upland habitat and our trees are really important to wetlands, which people don't realize. I think we definitely pride ourselves on being all about action.
I mean, we're real robust fundraisers. We're boots on the ground, doing conservation. We've had public land cleanups in the past, but also like for our for our last tree planting, we were lucky enough to have some funding support from the Environmental Action Organization. So credit where credit due. I think there's other great environmental clubs that are doing good work too here. We're not the only one.
That's actually, I'm glad you brought that up. I had the distinct pleasure of joining DU on that tree planting in the local community just outside of Messina in that area, and it was great to do some actual, as you said, boots on the ground conservation work. We were doing some site restoration there, with Winston Gietics, who is a local DU restoration technician. He does stuff with site work and also water management. So it's really cool having him there. He was telling us all about the water control structure and site management and what that's like and his various projects that he's involved with. So that was very cool.
And I also remember there just, even our time there in the morning, it was only a few hours, but we saw there was a few mallards, there was geese there, there was snipe there. There was turtles. It seemed like this area was a magnet for local biodiversity and it just got me thinking about how, you know, these very specific, you know, interests like preserving wetlands often have these cascading effects of you know, if you're into birds and that's your thing, and you're an avid bird watcher, you know these projects have this sort of trickle-down effect. Well, really many different, you know, communities of species benefit from these projects.
I mean, and I think that a lot of times people, people don't realize just how much wetlands do for us and how important they are. I mean, first off, saltwaterwetland marshes are the most biodiverse biome on the planet. Like more biodiverse than the rainforest, and a lot of people don't realize that. And even freshwater marshes are incredibly biodiverse and incredibly important to the work that we do on conservation in this country, not just for waterfall species.
But also like we need wetlands for carbon sequestrations, so a lot of people don't realize this. Wetlands will absorb carbon over time. And the problem with that is that it's a good thing in the long term because they will, they will grab onto this carbon and hold it, but when we go in there and we disturb wetlands, even if we're going to mitigate them somewhere else. When we disturb wetlands, we release that carbon back into the air. So when we think about wetlands fighting, I'm sorry. Combating climate change. They need to be left alone in order to do that. We've also got wetlands provide flood water retention, which I mean in in Northern New York, not a huge thing, but in some parts of the country that's paramount. They also provide clean drinking water and a lot of people like like people in New York City. DU has a project just across the river in New York City where a lot of the drinking water from New York City comes from right. New York City wouldn't have clean water if it wasn't for wetlands.
Well, I didn't know that all of this is coming from hunters, right? Like, yeah, I mean, a significant portion of this funding and interest is coming from hunters.
Yeah, I'm. I think Ducks Unlimited is not a hunting organization and we're relatively quick to make that distinction to people, but we represent hunters. We were founded by duck hunters in 1937. We're still supported primarily by duck hunters today, and we are very supportive of duck hunting in both of the work that we do in conservation and the work that we do legislatively on a national scale. Hunters were our first conservationists in this country and they continue to be some of our strongest conservation advocates, and there's plenty of programs outside of Ducks unlimited like for instance, you've got the federal duck stamp. So people don't realize this, but in order to waterfowl hunt in this country, there's a few exceptions, but for the most 99.9% of people have to purchase a federal duck stamp. This is $25 you go down to your local post office, you buy it once a year, and by law, 98% of that $25 has to go to wetlands conservation. And so we sold, we sell around a million stamps every year. So there you go, there's $25 million right there for conservation or 98% or 25,000,000 dollars and that's taken the form of the national wetlands, the national no. I'm sorry, the national refuge, the NWR. Which that's incredibly important in terms of fly over habitat and all sorts of migration stuff. And we actually have a huge NWR in New York in just east of Rochester there in Montezuma.
And so people don't realize like when you drive, if you'd ever take the Thruway from Albany to Buffalo, you drive through Montezuma and you see this huge 10s of thousands of acres of wetland that's funded entirely by duck stamps and but the vast majority of duck stamps were sold to duck hunters. You know, there's some bird watchers and stamp collectors that purchase those too and credit to them. I mean, they're helping with conservation, but the vast majority of that is funded by duck hunters.
Well, and just backtracking a little bit, I believe DU was founded in New York State, right?
Yeah, it's founded. It was founded in New York City, and it wasn't until the 90s that we moved to Memphis.
Oh, really? Oh, that's sick. So shout out New York, people am I right?
Absolutely, absolutely.
So I think some people might be a little struck by such a large amount of funding for conservation coming from hunters and I think a lot of people are still hung up on how can that work? How can, you know, hunters like, yeah they're paying for it, you know, with just having before they can even engage in that activity, right, buying the stamp and the licenses and all that. You know, they're supporting it. But how can they fund the conservation, while then immediately going to hunt these animals. Like, I think a lot of people struggle with it is, is that a good system or is it? Are we sort of putting one plank of wood in front of us while removing the one behind us?
Yeah, I mean, I think I think that that's, you know, that's a criticism that we're hearing of our country right now. I mean, there's certainly an ant- hunting movement out there that exists that says, you know, we recognize that hunters of the original conservationists, we recognize the hunters pay for the vast majority of conservation in this country. We still want to disconnect that funding source on the basis of the fact that hunters that maybe in the 21st century, we have moved beyond the need to hunt ourselves and to gather our own meat, and we want conservation to come from another funding somewhere else.
I wholly disagree with that sentiment, but I think that, you know, I don't blame people for having that thought, especially people who don't understand the way that the system works. I mean, there's a lot of directions we could do this, but I would talk about like,
On a personal basis, for me, I think about what are you more interested in? Are you more interested in species level success or are you more interested in the individual animal?
Right. I'm someone who loves to hunt. I killed quite a few ducks every year. I eat quite a few ducks and geese every year. I'm also very involved, and it's very important to me that species stay the same and so, or species, species. I'm sorry. Species numbers stay the same or increase. That we have a healthy, sustainable population of ducks in this country.
So the way that I think about it is that carrying capacity is the great limiter it's in in in the modern era, hunting is not a limiter of species success rates with habitat and it's always habitat that determines how robust a species population is.
And so when we talk about this subject, I think that people get so hung up on the fact that we are killing individual animals, that they forget the fact that I am paying for the privilege to go out there and kill individual animals. I kill 50 ducks a year, right? Whether I kill 50 ducks that this year or not the same number of ducks are in the air next year because they're all coming from the same habitat.
We have the same habitat regardless. On the other hand, I pay for a hunting licenses. I pay for a duck stamp, I give money to Ducks Unlimited, I plant trees as a duck hunter, and now I'm actually creating more habitat.
So in the end, it actually advantages, it actually advantages the ducks to have me hunt and kill 50 of them every year because I'm actually putting more habitat on the ground that will lead to more ducks next year.
At the end of the day all wild game is a renewable resource, and so when we think about, there's a certain percentage of whatever the percentage is. I'm not a biologist, but that says say that 5% we can have a healthy harvest. That's what we're at. We're about 3 to 5% of ducks every year are harvested by waterfall hunters.
We can have a three to 5% harvest rate of ducks every year. It has zero population effect because carrying capacity is the limiter, and that's food that we aren't. That's meat that we aren't taking in the factory farm system. So we aren't having this horrendous abuse of animals that we all know occurs in the factory farm system. You're not, you're not dealing with all the antibiotics, you're not dealing with any of the genetic modification. So it's healthier for you. You know where your food comes from. It's more cost effective for you.
That combats climate change because we know that those factory farms are terrible on climate change. So there's a lot of advantages to treating wild game as a renewable resource, especially when we do it sustainably, which is the way that hunting exists in this country, in Canada and Mexico.
I do just want to, I guess, push back a little bit or play a little devil's advocate if you will.
Sure.
Because I think one argument that I would have is, is could we not do these things. Could we not invest in these projects, you know, get this funding, invest in these projects with the manpower and just not hunt the ducks and just put all of our focus into, you know, just the just those aspects and we don't have to actually do any of the actual killing the animals?
That's a complicated question, and my answer to you is probably not. So, for example, if you banned hunting tomorrow, I think I would still be involved in Ducks Unlimited, and I would still be an avid waterfowl watcher and involved in conservation.
I would have had zero interest in that before I met waterfall hunting. Waterfowl hunting is a segway into caring about wetland species. I think there's no way around it. You interact with these animals at such an intimate level, calling back and forth with them, putting your hands on them, breasting them, eating them, disposing of carcasses, I mean the whole, the whole from the time that you set out your decoys in the morning to the time that that food is on your plate, you're really intimately connected with these birds, and it makes you care about them in a way that I think that's hard to replicate. Also the problem is I don't know how you would create the same level of robust funding that's consistent year to year. So take this for example, we just talked about the North American Wetlands Conservation Act. Last year, that program was appropriated $50 million. That's the most that's ever been appropriated in all 50 that's $50 million that goes into wetlands conservation in this country it’s really important. The Biden administration, who is out, who has done great work for conservation, great work for climate change, came out this year, and their proposal, they've proposed to cut that down to $37,000,000 right. And that's a great, that's a great program.
It's $50 million. I mean then the what what's the budget, $9 trillion. It's such a small percentage of the national budget, yet they're coming after it. If you think that we take out the duck stamp and we take out all of the hunting license sales and we take out all of the waterfowl hunters that are interested in Ducks Unlimited because they're waterfoul hunters we take out all that funding and we're going to replace it with what? And you think that you know, you think that somebody isn't gonna cut? I mean, you've got the Biden administration who, and I'm I. They have done great work for conservation. They are still coming after conservation funding. If you think that you're not going to have other administrations that get into office or other governor's office or other fish and game agencies that are going to start to say, you know, we can probably steal a little bit of money from conservation, no one's going to notice.
Right. And then you don't have the same. So not only do you not have the same robust levels of funding and the same consistent funding year to year, you've also just got less salience on the issue. So because you don't have right, you're going to lose a lot of people, a lot of people going to lose interest because they're not waterfowl hunting and they're not out there every fall seeing waterfall species seeing declines, seeing increases, seeing the habitat where that's happening. People are going to start even if they're not anti wetlands, they're gonna start to care less. And so when the Biden admin comes out and says we're cutting this by $13 million, that's a lot less people to call the Biden administration and say, no, you know, we want that $50 million. That's very important to us.
But like right now, Ducks Unlimited is working on putting pressure on it. I mean, at this point, the, the, the Biden administration has put out their proposed budget, but we're working on putting a little bit of pressure on the Appropriations Committee and some of our other legislators to say, hey, we need that 50 million or we, you know, the programs authorized for 65. We'd love to get 65, but we at least need that 50 million. That's incredibly important to the work that we do.
I know. I think it exists in some states. I know it's big in in Europe, but there's this sort of model that I think some animal rights activists or such would point to of well, why don't we, why don't we put, you know, the wildlife 1st and it's like you know, so we can have, you know coyotes and if they're, if they if they're coming onto your land and they're killing your cows, then the federal government should allocate money and will you know it will pay for your cow. So that way you don't have to kill the animal and then sort of that line of thinking. Like do you think that's practical here in in the United States? Or do you think that's a route that we should go down?
I think, so my first thing I would say is no, it's not practical and we are seeing. So for example, they banned Mountain Lion hunting in California and those programs, right, the the, the mitigation programs still exist. So, right, so you can still go and have your cattle reimbursed if they're killed with wildlife conflicts. It's no good if your entire cattle, all of your cattle are killed every single time by packs of coyotes and mountain lions. There's a reality to that. California is paying to cull mountain lions. There's no way around it. We just had a we just had a death the first time in 10 years from a Mountain Lion in California where they where they don't allow Mountain Lion hunting anymore. And you're seeing there's going to be wildlife, human livestock conflicts, and it doesn't matter how much you pay farmers to mitigate them, they're going to be there.
And you're gonna need to cull animals. Sometimes. This is part of living in, you know, in the 21st century, in the developed world is that we live up next to wild animals. And we have conflicts with them. And so the, you know, I like, I go back to this idea that the best, the best option is to have hunters who will pay for the opportunity to go out and hunt these animals and will salvage what they shoot so you so you go and shoot a mountain. People don't realize people eat mountain lions, right? So hunters will go out and they will shoot mountain lions and they will pay for the opportunity to do that and they will eat the Mountain Lion and use the fur. Or you can have the state of California pay professional sharp shooters to go in, in the middle of the night, and shoot a bunch of mountain lions. I mean, those are your options. And I have. I have 0 issue with you know spending federal tax dollars to reimburse cattle conflicts and I also don't think that we should indiscriminately kill every single coyote, but there's nobody in that. There are no hunters that are advocating for that. And you see that hunters are some of the people that are leading the charge on the wolf reintroductions, and I'm all for the wolf reintroductions. I think that's great. I think that they're an important part of our ecosystem and they're missing. You know, they're missed in the places that they're absent from right now. At the same time, I think that we need to allow hunters to reduce some of the wildlife conflicts that exist with them.
Well, thank you so much man for coming on. This has been a really great conversation. Is there any final words you have for the audience, for the people at home?
Yeah. And so, and I always like to leave people with this idea.
The time has now passed where if you care about, you know, the right to hunt, fish, trap, consumptives recreate, or the right to own firearms. Or you care about conservation climate change that if you care about these things, the time has passed for you to sit on the sidelines.
We are at a crossroads in this country and in this world where we are losing habitat. We have a climate that's being destroyed and we've got these elements that want to take hunting and fishing and your firearms from you get involved, be involved in the process. We can, you know, we can no longer sit on the sideline if we want to be able to hunt and fish, and we want to have places that are wild to hunt fish.
So yeah, but thank you so much for having me. It was it was really good to come on, and hang out with Nature Up North for the day.
Yeah. Thank you, man. Nature Up North really appreciates it, and Nature Up North really appreciates you at home for listening. Thank you guys. You guys really are the best. You support us. So thank you guys for listening to this installment of Naturally Speaking. I've been your host, Patrick Chase and I don't know about you guys, but I'm inspired to get up and get outdoors with Nature up north.