Abstracts

Presented by Chuck Loesch - Email: chuck_loesch@fws.gov

The expansion and intensification of oil and gas development in the Bakken shale oil formation that began in 2004 raised several uncertainties for managers tasked with prioritizing wetland and grassland habitat for conservation in the region. Of specific concern due to substantial overlap of wetland resources within the developed areas is the potential impact on breeding duck pair abundance. To test for large-scale changes in breeding duck pair abundance, we conducted wetland-based surveys for five species of dabbling ducks during 2015-2017. We used zero-inflated Poisson models to model the count data. In addition to wetland size, class, and location covariates previously used to predict breeding duck abundance, we included a spatially and temporally explicit index of disturbance. Our analysis results were mixed and suggested that abundance of early nesting species were positively related to the disturbance index, while later nesting species were negatively related to the disturbance index. Regardless of the relationship, the effect size was small and we do not consider the effect of disturbance resulting from oil and gas development on breeding duck pairs to be biologically significant. Consequently, efforts to conserve wetland resources that provide important habitat for breeding duck pairs should continue within the overlap of the Prairie Pothole Region and Bakken oil field, irrespective of oil and gas development intensity.