Population Ecology and Migration Chronology of Wood Ducks that Breed in the Upper Mississippi Great Lakes Region

The complex nature of wildlife populations and their management has sparked a diverse system of scientific research to better understand how natural processes and human inputs have altered wildlife population dynamics. Wood ducks are a specialized waterfowl species that nest in natural cavities and are an important game species in both the Mississippi and Atlantic flyways, ranking from second to fifth annually relative to other species in overall contribution to harvest. While wood ducks have been extensively studied across much of their range, there are gaps in our understanding about wood duck population dynamics. First, the difficulty associated with estimating wood duck population size means we don’t have traditional abundance metrics like we do for many other waterfowl species in North America. Second, wood ducks are closely associated with forested wetland habitats and are harvested across their range, but we lack understanding about how ecological processes and anthropogenic factors affect wood duck mortality dynamics. Third, wood ducks migrate between breeding grounds at more northern latitudes and wintering areas at more southern latitudes, but we don’t fully understand their migration chronology. Therefore, we used a combination of long-term capture-mark-reencounter data, harvest data, and short-term field-based data to address these questions.. In Chapter II, we used 57 years (1961-2017) of band-recovery data and total harvest data in the Upper Mississippi Great Lakes Region to estimate wood duck population size. In Chapter III, we used 57 years (1961-2017) of band-recovery data to examine the influence of wood duck population size, waterfowl hunter abundance, waterfowl hunting season lengths, and daily bag limits on wood duck mortality at varying spatial scales. Lastly, in Chapter IV, we captured, banded, and attached light-level geolocators to wood ducks at various locations in the state of Wisconsin during 2020 and 2021 to better understand wood duck migration along during annual cycle. The studies herein will begin to fill knowledge gaps regarding wood duck population ecology, specifically, harvest dynamics and migration chronology