Is a Mallard a Mallard?
Shawn Swearingen for SPLIT REED
Cover Photo Courtesy: Joe Subolefsky
Whenever we close our eyes and someone says the word ‘duck’, the one that usually comes to mind is the mallard. The odds are it is either the first duck we ever shot or the one we shoot the most of since it is the most widespread duck in North America. According to one wildlife biologist’s research, there is one flyway that the mallard historically shouldn’t be as widespread in. That is the Atlantic Flyway.
Kristie Baxter
Those hunters that are accustomed to shooting the old limit of 4 mallards a day have done so on the backs of private RSA-released mallards and historically state-released programs started in the 1920s. Private citizens and the states at that time tried to increase the population of mallards in the Atlantic Flyway. After unsuccessfully trying to propagate with the native mallards and black ducks, they turned to Europe where those mallards were successfully domesticated for release programs. These ‘domestic variants’ were propagated and released from the 1920s through the 1960s at the rate of roughly 500,000 a year. Today there are roughly 200,000 birds a year released according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
How did these ‘domestic variants’ impact the historically native mallards and black ducks? At first, it was thought that these released European mallards wouldn’t leave the area let alone breed with the mallards and black ducks. Through the research being done by waterfowl biologist Philip Lavretsky at the University of Texas at El Paso, we now know this to be an untruth. In fact, by comparing the genetic ancestry of nearly 2,500 mallards worldwide, including 1,500 from North America, Lavretsky and colleagues estimate that a mallard shot today in the Atlantic Flyway has a 2% chance of being a true 100% wild non-hybrid mallard related to one a 100 years ago. Comparably, it is known that a black duck shot today has the same genetic stock as a black duck 100 years ago. Thank you to our forefathers for preserving birds in museums.
Elevated Wild
Now enters in the state of mind usually reserved in fishing: native vs. wild? Do we continue to encourage the release of these ‘domestic variant’ mallards for the sake of putting green on the pile? Whereas the genetic difference between a mallard and a black duck is ~1.5%, comparing released game-farm mallards are over 10% different from true wild North American ones. That is enough difference to be classified as a different species. These genetic differences are so wild that the mallards of the Atlantic Flyway are now entirely distinct from those in more western flyways. So why do we consider this a mallard in the same class of mind when compared to other flyways?
Katie Peel
The research being done answers a lot of questions. It is also raising new questions that we don’t have the answer to, yet. The breeding population of mallards in the Atlantic Flyway is decreasing, but only in the PA/NY area. In Canada, the breeding population is doing well. But why? Are the ‘domestic variant’ populations shifting westward into other flyways too? The better that we as hunters understand the game we pursue and their migrations, the better we can help conservation efforts and understand why bag limits are set. So when you shoot that mallard this season and talk to others in the blind about why the limit is ‘only’ 2, think a little deeper about how that green is possible in the Atlantic Flyway.
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