Latest / Ducks Unlimited Podcast / Ep. 473 – Prairie Habitat Conditions: An Early Read

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Ep. 473 – Prairie Habitat Conditions: An Early Read · Ducks Unlimited Podcast

• 00:00 Mike Brasher Hey everybody, welcome back to the Ducks Unlimited podcast. I am your host, Mike Brasher. And those of you that have listened to the podcast long enough will know that that music means that we are being joined by Dr. Scott Stephens from up in Canada. Scott, welcome to the podcast. Hey Mike, always good to join you guys and visit. We're gonna be talking with Scott here about habitat conditions in the prairies. It's that time of year when ducks have returned, they're starting their breeding and we want to check in with Scott. We're here in late May and we're trying to get an early read on how those conditions are shaping up. Before we do that though, we do have some really exciting news to share with you. We've been doing these podcasts now for about three, four years. And we're gonna change things up a little bit with our schedule. Beginning in early June, which is when we're going to resume our regularly scheduled releases of these episodes, we're gonna be going year around from that point forward. Our first episode is gonna come out after this one. And from that point forward, the Ducks Unlimited podcast is gonna run year round, two episodes per week with maybe an occasional bonus episode in there. Certainly during the hunting season, we expect some of that to occur. But we think that's gonna provide a bit more consistency in when we're providing information, when we're sharing messages and updates and exciting stories. And so we've had various people asking about when's the next episode coming out and when are we gonna be releasing more episodes? And so there's your answer. And then that's the other piece of news that we're changing that schedule. So I hope you look forward to that. But for today, I am happy to welcome in Scott Stephens and we'll talk about how things are going in the prairies. It's been, I don't know, an eventful year, kind of weather-wise. There's just a lot of weather watching that occurs from let's say fall, winter, and then certainly as we get into spring. And I talked to a lot of people, including you, Scott, that work there, that live there. And it just never ceases to amaze me how difficult it is to get a solid read on what conditions are gonna be like. I think probably because it's so variable across that broad landscape. And I think, remind me, earlier in the last fall, and maybe even throughout some of the early winter, the Dakotas, some of those areas received significant amounts of snowfall. But at that time, as of late winter, we weren't necessarily expecting that to produce significant runoff because some of the folks were saying a lot of that snow, the moisture had evaporated from that snow. And it wasn't until maybe here recently, the past few months, that we got some more snow, some more rain, and I think that changed the prospect for certain geographies up there. Am I kind of on the mark there? 02:41 Scott Stephens Yes, you're definitely on the mark that, in general, the prairie bottle region is a landscape of variation and extremes, right? So snow early in the winter is a good start, but typically it's kind of late in the winter that will really dictate what kind of conditions we have. And my understanding, I mean, you'll probably have folks from the Dakotas on, but they did end up with quite a bit of snow that set them up to have really good conditions. And a lot of times late in the winter, that meant that Colorado low systems that were coming out of the Rockies were tracking over the Dakotas, dumping lots of moisture and snow there. So we got less of those to the north. Now, some years they track to the north and Saskatchewan and Manitoba get dumped on. We got a little bit of that late in the winter. I remember one that Eastern Saskatchewan got, Manitoba got, we got five or six inches of snow here, and when I got my snowblower out to deal with it, it kind of looked like a slushy coming out the end of my snowblower. So really high moisture content snow, 03:46 Mike Brasher it didn't occur across the whole geography for sure. There's all sorts of maps available for people to view online. North American Drought Monitor is a great resource. It pulls data from various entities, Canada, the US and Mexico. They actually have a tool in here now where you can look at changes in drought intensity across North America over different time periods. And so if you pull up, I have the April 30th, 2023 map in comparison to change from a year ago. So that's kind of like, a lot of people will ask, well, where are we this year relative to last year? That's kind of one way to look at it is, okay, maybe it's not, and you and I, I think, have talked about this, maybe we're not maximum moisture, maximum pond numbers, habitat conditions. But if you look at where we are this year compared to last year, there are actually quite a few areas in Southern Alberta, Southern Saskatchewan and portions of Montana that are materially improved from a drought status standpoint from last year. Now, how a change in drought status will translate into a change in pond count, that's a little bit of a different story. But again, with this idea that we're trending in the right direction, especially when you go back to 2021 and the extreme drought that we saw then, extreme dry conditions, 05:07 Scott Stephens we're definitely headed in the right direction. Yeah, no, I think that's right. It is interesting to think about it. I appreciate all those data sets too, Mike. I will admit, I'm an evidence-based guy, so enjoy looking at that data. It still doesn't replace for me kind of a drive across these landscapes to look at what conditions actually look like and look at what those seasonal wetlands look like, how full are they, did they actually refill, are they drawn down or is there just a little bit of water in them, that kind of thing. I haven't done a big tour yet. I will get to see some country here in early June and do that, but I do have a summary of what the data is telling us and what I've heard reports from other staff 05:53 Mike Brasher across the Canadian prairies. One other thing, Scott, and then I'll get you to report on those things. Now have in front of me the drought monitor map. So what I was referencing previously is a drought monitor map, but it references the change from a year ago. And so now I'm looking at the one that's current as of April 30th. And there are, despite those changes that I talked about, improvements that we've seen over the past year, there are portions of Southern Alberta, Eastern Montana, Southwestern North Dakota, good portions of South Dakota, as of April 30th, this was the data, that are still in various levels of drought. Nothing as severe as two, three years ago, but still a few places out there where you're probably gonna find some dry conditions. I did hear from some of our staff that were in North Dakota, I guess earlier this week for Ducks University. It's an event we put on for a lot of our staff to expose them to the Prairie Pothole region, Duck Ecology, Ducks Unlimited Conservation Mission. It's sort of a biological conservation orientation for a lot of our new staff. And so they were there in North Dakota and they came back raving about the condition of the wetlands where they were, they're probably in that Missouri-Katoa region. And they were just amazed at how healthy and good those wetlands looked in that particular landscape. So that's good news. I think the Dakotas by and large are setting up pretty well, but what have you heard in that regard? People you've talked with, overall, 07:25 Scott Stephens how's the PPR shaping up? Yeah, well, I would say when the snow melted, we had pretty decent snowpack across a bunch of areas. In Manitoba, I would say we had better snowpack than we had last year. So conditions are pretty good here. Even Eastern Saskatchewan had better snowpack than last winter. The maps that I know you and I look at, Mike, throughout the spring, it was pretty consistent across the park lands. Even into Alberta, they had pretty good snowpack. Now, you already mentioned Southern Alberta, Prairie areas there still did not have much snow, were pretty dry. I think that probably is true for Southwestern Saskatchewan also. So that's kind of where we were when the snow melted. And then after that, we're kind of dependent on rains. And if we get those low pressure systems out of the Rockies tracking on the right path, we can get rains that then continue to refill wetlands. I know across the Canadian prairies, we've not seen much of that yet. We've not seen a ton of liquid precipitation fall since the snow melted. So we had pretty decent conditions in a bunch of areas. We haven't improved upon that much since the snow melted. 08:39 Mike Brasher And, you know, but that can change quickly too. Yeah, I'm looking now, I've just got a whole bunch of maps in front of me here. Canadian Wildlife Service, their percent of average precipitation data set. It shows, I'm looking at growing season, which runs from April 1st through now through, yeah, May 16th, I think is the date here. It shows normal to maybe a bit above normal precipitation in some locations of Southern Saskatchewan, which is always great to see. Now there are other portions of that agricultural landscape in Saskatchewan and Alberta that are in sort of a precipitation deficit over that month and a half. So yeah, just kind of speak to some of what you're talking about there. But hey, Southern Saskatchewan getting rain at normal or above normal levels, that's always a good thing, 09:31 Scott Stephens especially this time of year. Yeah, exactly. So I think if I were to characterize the Canadian prairies overall, you know, before Mike, we've talked about Johnny Lynch and some of his metrics and, you know, it's like, hey, if the Southern prairies are wet and the park lands are wet, we kind of have all of the duck factory in production. I would say we're not in that boat. You know, we have the park lands in production. They're not kind of the most productive part of the system. And we have some water in the Southern prairies. So, you know, not kind of all the green lights flashing, but some areas are going to be okay. So, you know, I would say I would expect, you know, sort of average to slightly above average production potential this year. Yeah, in the Canadian prairies. 10:20 Mike Brasher If you had to compare it to last year, I know you want to see the data, I want to see the data, but you're feeling right now, are we in that same kind of window of what we saw last year? Do you think we're a little bit above or maybe even a little bit below conditions last year? 10:38 Scott Stephens If I had to guess, like, I think we're close to where we were last year, but I would guess probably a little above would be my sense. I know we made some bets about where breeding pair numbers were going to be. Like, I think those will be up from last year because we thought we had okay production so that we should see a rise in that. We'll see how much. That would be my prediction. So I think we're a little better, not wildly better. And, you know, probably the year that I can think of where it's like, holy cow, we've got all of the components of the duck factory in full production, that would be 2011 would be the year that I would cite when it's like, it was wet in the Dakotas, it was wet in Southern Canada, 11:17 Mike Brasher it was wet in the park lands. Yeah, those are the years that we hope for, but you can't have, and you're never going to get a whole string of those years, like for, you're not going to get five to 10 of those years strung together and you really don't want them to be because it gets to the whole loss of productivity in those wetlands if they stay wet for too long. We've talked a lot about the necessary, yeah, struggle, how it's necessary to occasionally go through drought to recharge the productivity of those wetlands. But yeah, we definitely like to get those every now and then. And let's see, Scott, I guess the other thing that I'll say, we're here in mid-May, I do know that the breeding population and habitat survey is underway. I don't know how far along that is, but I did speak with Dr. Ken Richkus last week and he confirmed that they have in fact started that survey, it's been underway for a couple of weeks, I think. And we're going to try to get Ken on to talk about that survey, to give us a little bit of an update on it, and maybe talk about one of the other areas that we don't think much about. Perhaps even here, we're going to try to get one of the pilots that's involved in the Eastern Survey Area, Eastern Canada, Eastern Boreal Forest to talk with us. Whether we can actually make that happen remains to be seen. But nevertheless, survey is underway. We have no insight on what they're seeing. I've not heard anything, I've not talked to anyone about that. And so we'll just kind of have to wait 12:48 Scott Stephens and see when all that data rolls in. Yeah, I did hear recently that I think the surveys are maybe done in the Dakotas. And I know in Southern Canada, they had some equipment issues with the plane that was supposed to fly here, because we've got one of our staff who actually helps do some of the ground surveys that correlate what they see in the air to a corrected number on the ground, and they've been held up. 13:13 Mike Brasher So survey hasn't started here in Manitoba, I know. What about the timing of this spring? Like, it seemed as though it was a really cold spring, it held birds up maybe south of, you know, in South Dakota, maybe a little bit farther south for an extended period of time. I know the snow geese departed the southern latitudes in a hurry, but then it seems like they just hit a brick wall up there sort of around the southern end of South Dakota. But then things changed rather quick based on what I was hearing, and then they just shot right on through there. And of course, that would have been the time when ducks would have moved en masse into those North Dakota and Canadian breeding areas. What can you tell us about what you've noticed with regard to the timing of the spring 13:58 Scott Stephens and the arrival of ducks? Yeah, at least here in southern Manitoba, ducks didn't arrive here until a little later. Now, that's okay, because, you know, it would really be the last week of April when the early nesting species are getting going. And, you know, we had conditions that were conducive to birds being here then. You know, it's actually now that really some species are just getting started. You know, I'm sure we have teal nests on the ground. We've had mallards and pintails since probably late April. You know, shovelers, gadwall will be, you know, probably aren't started nesting yet. So it's, it kind of depends on the species that we're talking about, but, you know, yeah, birds arrived here a little bit later than normal, but I wouldn't say that the nesting season was pushed back because we had, we had okay conditions for them to get going 14:47 Mike Brasher by the time they normally would. I'm gonna throw you a little bit of a curve ball here and ask you about Canada geese. I know we talked, you and not, not you and I, but others have talked about a spring Canada goose season that y'all have there in Manitoba. And I wanna say that someone told me this year, I heard it in a conversation, you can tell me if I'm wrong, that there was virtually no opportunity for that season this year because of how cold it was and how long it stayed frozen. And by the time the birds, Canada geese started returning, 15:18 Scott Stephens the season was closed, is that right? That is correct. I think we've only had that season for three years and it runs, let me think about this. I think it opens in March and this year it would have run through Easter weekend and like, I don't think I saw a goose during that timeframe. And I've seen the province of Manitoba present their data on this, you know, what they're trying to do, the goal of that season is the sort of more resonant birds that would breed around here, breed in the city of Winnipeg, breed in Southern Manitoba are the first migrants to arrive. And then as you get later in April, you start getting birds mixed in that are gonna fly north and breed in Hudson Bay lowlands or fly all the way to the Arctic. So that's why the season is set up to be from that March through early April. And yeah, unfortunately, during the timeframe that they've had that season, we have just not had very good conditions to allow anybody to harvest those birds. 16:15 Mike Brasher And that would be maybe an indication of how cold and how late the spring was. Now I have heard or read someone or maybe somebody told me this that in some of these years, I don't know if this year is gonna be the case, but when springs are particularly late, it can lead to a lot of Canada geese, resident Canada geese forgoing breeding altogether. Do you have any sense of that? You're likely to see that kind of situation this year or you think it's gonna be, I know there will be some that will attempt to breed, but maybe it's gonna be a reduced breeding effort. 16:47 Scott Stephens Any insight on that? Yeah, we definitely have seen that in the previous couple of years, where for whatever reason, late spring, cool conditions, there was just not much production from local Canada geese. I know when I'm at the office at Oakhamic Marsh, we have a bunch of geese nest around there. They nest on the roof of the building. And we definitely have geese on nests there. In my Facebook feed, I had things pop up from a year ago when goslings were hatching and we're a ways from goslings hatching this year. So they were delayed, but they tend to nest a little earlier than the ducks. They would have been in that time period where we still had some cold conditions. So they will be delayed, probably will have some impact on them, but given where populations are at, nobody's gonna be too worried about that, especially when we have spring seasons 17:39 Mike Brasher trying to whittle those populations back a bit. Any insight or notable observations regarding duck migration into the area? That's a question I always ask and there's never a great answer, but just anything unusual that's worth commenting on? This spring, you mean? Yeah, yeah. Well, what did I say? Did I say fall or something? 17:59 Scott Stephens No, you just said spring, or you said migration into the area. I thought, okay, we're talking about spring. Well, I would say, like we talked about, usually birds you're seeing, some birds show up in late March, early April kind of thing, and it was definitely later. It was like you described, birds departed places down south, were moving north, and then kind of hit this wall of cool conditions. We still had snow on the ground. I mean, this spring, Mike, it was into, what were we into? Late April or May, we still had some snow on the ground. And this is other species that, I looked out in my backyard, and I probably had 300 Bohemian waxwings that were in the trees in my backyard. Now, my neighbors and I had some trees with some leftover berries, dried up berries on them, and they were pretty excited about taking advantage of those. So, there was not a lot of other resources out there. They were here for a few days, and then they cleaned things out. So, it just shows you that, it's a whole suite of birds that deal with those conditions, sort of abnormal conditions in some year, but they adapt pretty well. 19:12 Mike Brasher They've got wings, that's the good news. Yeah, for sure. Let's see, Scott, one of the things that I intended to talk about earlier, we can go back and do it now, is just this idea, and we've talked about this before, that just because we get a lot of snow, doesn't mean it's going to translate into abundant, full wetlands. There are some cases where we've definitely seen that, but there are other portions of the prairie landscape where I've heard people talk about, yeah, most of the snow melted, and the ground just sucked all of that moisture up. There's some places that were like that, right? And that kind of relates to how dry the soil would have been, low soil moisture, at freeze up in the fall, right? Yeah, I'm trying to think back to the fall. I want to say maybe some places in Alberta, 19:59 Scott Stephens that would have been that way. Alberta would have been dry. So, they could add a pile of snow, and none of it might have ran. Now, they didn't have a pile of snow. They had dry soil moisture, not much snow. That's a recipe for there being almost no runoff, which in Southern Alberta, that's my understanding of what we had. And then, Mike, I don't know if you guys have picked up on this in the news. It's definitely in the news all across Canada, is much of the Southern boreal forest in Alberta is on fire right now. Oh, yes, that's right. In fact, I was on calls with some of the staff from the Great Plains office yesterday, and they said, hey, could you keep your smoke up there? They actually said it rolled in there in Bismarck, the smoke from the fires in Alberta, and they could not see across the parking lot. Oh my goodness, wow. So, dry conditions on a big scale have resulted in forest fires up there. So, it just illustrates what we're talking about, variation in soil moisture and precipitation that falls. And then, as we move to this time of the year, humidity levels and then lightning strike fires and those kinds of things have big impacts 21:09 Mike Brasher on many of these landscapes that we think about. Do we think that it's dry enough in the boreal forest in portions of that area where it would have, it would reduce the number of wetlands available for breeding waterfowl? I know that landscape is just really, really wet to begin with, and those wetlands are pretty stable. I would imagine it takes a fairly significant drought to dry some of those up. What's your idea there? 21:35 Scott Stephens Yeah, I don't think it will have that kind of impact because it is really, some of those landscapes, it's like 70% of the landscape will be water. So, the uplands are dry, soil moisture in those uplands are dry, so they're having fires, but I wouldn't, that system just doesn't go through droughts like we see in the prairies from a wetland standpoint. So, just kind of a different system. So, there'll be wetlands for birds to take advantage of there and we'll see some birds in the boreal because we're not sopping wet in the prairies. 22:07 Mike Brasher So, I think things will be okay. I have another question for you here. I was, a few weeks ago, Matt Young, our magazine editor, shared a news article with me. It was talking about flooding in Southern Saskatchewan and he was kind of getting pretty excited about that. And like, oh, that means that we're gonna have good wetland conditions there in Southern Saskatchewan. It looks like that's probably gonna be the case, but I'll have to confess that my initial reaction when I saw that and I saw all the flooding and downstream flooding of communities and so forth, and knowing what I know about wetland drainage in Saskatchewan, I could not help but think, I'm not really sure what to make of that. Are we seeing, because you never know, that was a news article. It was talking about flooding in one location. I'm not familiar with the watershed where that flooding is occurring, but I could certainly imagine a scenario where that flooding is as much a result of drainage of wetlands in the upper reaches of that watershed as it is as much about there being so much rain that it fills up all the wetlands and then spills over and floods the downstream communities. And I would imagine that's true at some scales, what I'm imagining, what I'm describing there, but it also, I think it's just a point worth making that as we lose more of that water storage capacity in the form of wetlands, the harder it's gonna be to know what that relationship between precipitation and wetland conditions is gonna be in some of those areas. Am I right? 23:40 Scott Stephens Yeah, you're exactly right. I mean, in some landscapes where there's been lots of that wetland drainage, basically, there is no relationship between precipitation and wetland conditions because the wetlands just don't hold water again, because upwards of 90% of them have been drained. Even if we get record levels of rain, it runs out of them into the ditch, down to the creek, down to the river and off the landscape. Now, what I think is interesting to think about is, there's been a lot of science done by folks at the University of Saskatchewan and even ag researchers that says, hey, there's an advantage to keeping those wetlands on the landscape because as climate gets more variable, those wetlands sort of mitigate even humidity and provide benefits to crops. And when they're not there, if you get conditions like we have in Alberta now where the humidity is super low, it's like, then you get drought stress on the crops. So, I think it suggests, and this probably isn't too surprising for many of us who study ecology, that some of those systems may suffer when they're impacted that much. Yeah, they got some more acres of crop land, but under these challenges that we have, that we see with climate change and increased variation and precipitation and temperatures and all of those things, some of those systems are probably less resilient because the wetlands are gone 25:05 Mike Brasher to mitigating some of those conditions. I appreciate you taking a minute to talk about that. It was something that just jumped out at me and I wanted to get your thoughts on that. I guess we're getting pretty close to wrapping this one up. If I had to summarize kind of where we are relative to habitat conditions in the prairies based on our conversation here, we're somewhere in the neighborhood of where we were last year, which is a pretty good place to be. Maybe in your opinion, based on kind of what you're hearing, not necessarily what you've seen, because by your own admission, you haven't been out much on the landscape at this time, based on what you're hearing, based on some of the precipitation that you've seen through watching the weather, maybe we're a little bit better off habitat condition wise in the prairies than we were last year. That's a good thing, especially when you factor in our mutual expectation that we're going to have a few more birds returning to the prairies than we did, let's say last year, certainly the year before. So we're, I think both of us agree, we're trending in the right direction. We're going to try to talk with a few other people from different parts of that landscape or really multiple breeding landscapes, albeit Ducks Unlimited's National Convention in Las Vegas here in a couple of weeks. And I'm going to take some of our recording equipment with us and we'll try to pull a few people to the side and maybe get a little quick five or 10 minute synopsis from them on what they're seeing in terms of breeding habitat conditions in the areas where they're working, maybe from Eastern Canada, the boreal forest, Great Lakes, and then in the Dakotas as well. So we'll be bringing that information to you if everything works out. But anything else to add here, Scott, in terms of your view on how things are looking in the prairies and how you would translate that 26:53 Scott Stephens into an outlook for productivity this year? Yeah, I think you've characterized it pretty well. I think similar to last year at this point, maybe slightly better, but again, stay tuned because what happens to conditions from now through July when we have ducklings on the landscape is important too. If the skies open up and we get a bunch of rains and wetland conditions improve, that means any production that we had, they will have pretty good brood survival and anytime we have seasonal wetlands flooded into July, that's great for brood survival. It means we'll have more birds on the wing in the fall than if we get not much rain between now and then. 27:34 Mike Brasher Scott, I also, before we started recording, I had mentioned that we would probably talk about your gardening and some of the other things that you're doing right now. You shared with me quickly that there is no garden planted yet, it's still a bit too early for that. So we'll catch up with you on the next, I guess the subsequent episode on kind of how that's going. Any parting words? 27:53 Scott Stephens Well, more of a question. So, the interesting thing that I saw, Mike, is you should talk about the interesting bottles of stuff that you discovered. What bottles of stuff might that be? Well, I think this was maybe a throwback to some of your childhood trapping adventures. 28:12 Mike Brasher Oh, that was good, yeah. So you're talking about a picture that I posted on Instagram and Facebook. Sure, I can talk about that. That was last weekend, I was down at my mom's and my brother and I were going through, oh, various places there, the workshop, clearing out a few things and a woodshed. And there's no telling how many times I had been in that place over the past three decades. And there was a little, I guess it was a little tray that once fit in a pullout tray that went in a refrigerator. And it was all covered up with leaves and I didn't know exactly what was in it, just thought it was just a collection of stuff, but we were there cleaning out. And so that was the time to actually go through things in detail and so I started uncovering the leaves, pulling the leaves out of this little tray and I saw these plastic bottles. One of them was a little pump, spray, squirt bottle. They were all shampoo bottles is what they were. At least a couple of them were. And then I was like, what is this? I noticed it had some dark liquid in it. They were maybe a third to a half full and it clicked like, oh, I know what this is. I thought, holy cow, they were bottles of urine, fox urine, coyote urine, probably. I know it had to at least be red fox, probably gray fox would be, I'm guessing, and then coyote urine as well that I used back in my days of trapping when I was a teenager, probably I was 15 to 18 years old was sort of the peak of my trapping activity. And that would have been, it was, Eddie and I did, my brother and did the math and we came up with somewhere between 31 and 33 years old. They had been, and of course I had to take a picture of it and write a little story about it and post it. It's like, oh my, that was incredible to discover that. And yes, I did open them and smell them and it was just like pure ammonia almost. And I offered to mail them to you. Stacey said that that would not have been 30:19 Scott Stephens a very welcome present though. Yeah, well, the ironic part was there were a couple of our mutual friends who was like, hey, Scott might want those. 30:27 Mike Brasher I didn't even think about trying to sell them. Well, I couldn't have sold it, I guess. I don't know, maybe, I don't even know what the laws are on that, but yeah, I would have been much more happy just to give it to you and have you put it to use, but I think the challenge is associated with shipping that 30:43 Scott Stephens and the risk involved probably weren't worth it. And I think it might not be as fresh and useful as it was when you got it 33 years ago either. 30:52 Mike Brasher That was amazing. One of those places, one of the bottles, so I must've extracted the urine from some of the animals that I trapped, it must've been where I got some of it, but then some of it was purchased. And I forget exactly the manufacturer. And it was hard to make out who that manufacturer was on the label, because it was so kind of worn. And I can't remember who it might've been, but anyway, it was- 31:21 Scott Stephens Well, you know, it's hard for those guys. They have to be talented to catch the fox when it's ready to pee and get the little bucket underneath them, right? 31:30 Mike Brasher That's right. I'm trying to think if I found anything else, any other artifacts, then yeah, you know, a few other things, but that was the prize. I'm glad I was able to share that. That was interesting. Yep. Well, I think that'll do it with that. Completely off the track. That's right. Scott, thanks for joining us here, man. We'll catch up with you, I don't know, 31:53 Scott Stephens probably next month sometime. Yep, that'd be perfect. I'll have been out and seen some countries, so I can share insight then. 31:59 Mike Brasher Sounds great. A very special thanks to our guest on today's episode, Dr. Scott Stevens with Ducks Unlimited Canada. We appreciate his insight and giving us a bit of an update on prairie habitat conditions up there. As always, we thank our producer, Chris Isaac, who does a wonderful job with these episodes, all the magic that he does, and then getting them out to y'all. And then to you, the listener, we thank you for your time. We thank you for supporting us here on the podcast, for your interest in the podcast, and for your support of wetlands and waterfowl conservation.