ORIGINAL: bearklr

Jim,
I did read the link you posted but I see it quite a bit differently. You on one hand are looking at it and saying if we kill of the predators then the duck population will increase which is true but WHY should we need to do that? You must look at the broader picture. Here is a quote from the same article that you posted.

"Since we settled the praries man has had a dramatic effect on the landscape. Wetlands have been drained, native wetlands have been lost and new and increasing predator populations are foraging in the remaining cover, and as a result the duck factory is operating well below historic levels."

If you look at the entire problem without any bias you can see that land loss is the real problem. If man would have left the wetlands alone then the percentage of successfull nests would have been more than sufficient to maintain a healthy duck population. However, the wetlands were not left alone and now there is a much smaller piece of land that is required to maintain the same population that the original parcel was capable of. As a result the only way to perform this little magic trick is to kill off the predators and increase nesting success within the land that is left. Yes, it's easy for everyone to throw stones and say "it's all the predators fault" but when you step back and look at the real picture man is clearly to blame. Of course, man is never one to take responsability for his actions either, so therefore predators must once again become the whipping boy.