15 Million Acres and Counting
By Steve Adair, PhD, and Billy Gascoigne Waterfowl hunters have a long, proud history of supporting wetlands and waterfowl conservation. In 1930, a small group of duck hunters led by insurance and publishing magnate Joseph Palmer Knapp turned their passion for waterfowl and their habitats into action by forming the More Game Birds in America Foundation. Alarmed by declining duck populations, the foundation lobbied intensively for a cent-a-shell tax on shotgun ammunition to establish a permanent source of revenue for conservation. This effort, which was broadly supported by waterfowl hunters, culminated in the passage of the Migratory Bird Hunting Stamp Act (Duck Stamp Act) in 1934. A year later, More Game Birds launched the inaugural International Wild Duck Census, covering most of Canada and the north-central United States. Results from this groundbreaking survey led the foundation to conclude that unless prompt action was taken to preserve the Canadian breeding grounds, the future of waterfowl and waterfowl hunting would be in jeopardy. In response to this threat, Knapp and his colleagues formed Ducks Unlimited, which was incorporated in Washington, DC, on January 29, 1937. DUs founders formed volunteer committees in each state and went to work raising funds to send to Canada, where a staff of biologists and engineers began restoring and protecting large permanent wetlands called duck factories. This marked the beginning of a new era in which sportsmen and women, who wer
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