By admin 
MINNEAPOLIS – Whether Donald Trump Jr. is the conservationist he claims to be is debatable. The son of President Donald Trump, Don Jr. once said he “would be a very, very loud voice in (his father’s) ear” about conservation.
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But Whit Fosburgh, a former president and chief executive of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, considered the younger Trump a disappointment.
“I felt like we had been sold a bill of goods,” Fosburgh told Politico in 2019.
In either case, now would be a good time for Don Jr. – an avowed duck hunter – to speak up for the 1.5 million acres of wetlands and millions of ducks facing new threats in Minnesota, northern Iowa, the Dakotas and eastern Montana.
Commonly called the Prairie Pothole Region, or PPR, the area is often referred as the nation’s “duck factory.”
Conservationists say mallards, pintails, wigeon, gadwalls, shovelers and blue-winged teal are particularly vulnerable following a surprise July 24 request for public comments by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS).
In its statement, the service suggested it might weaken drain-tile rules it formalized as recently as 2024 to protect wetlands lying within FWS easements. The rules ensure the tiles don’t drain wetlands purchased in the past half-century with proceeds from federal Duck Stamp sales.
The service requested the public weigh in by last Friday.
Required of waterfowl hunters nationwide, duck stamps (now $25) originated in 1934 with passage of the Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamp Act. Hunters believed funds raised by sale of the stamps would help ensure ducks remained on the landscape forever.
Beginning in the late 1950s and 1960s the FWS purchased properties with duck stamp funds what would become the nation’s first WPAs, or waterfowl production areas (about 3,000 exist in the PPR; 770 in Minnesota).
About the same time, the service began purchasing wetland easements. In exchange for cash, farmers and other landowners kept the land but promised never to drain acquired wetlands.
Under terms of the easements – which last forever – farmers can cut hay or plant the wetlands in dry years. But they can’t drain them.
The program remains extremely popular. Nearly 230 PPR farmers and ranchers currently await enrollment.
Though most wetlands protected by FWS easements are less than an acre, with an average water depth of 6 inches to 8 inches, they are vitally important because they support the plant and invertebrate life ducks need to migrate north in spring and breed.
In 2020, to further protect wetlands within the easements, the FWS developed distances at which farmers’ and ranchers’ drain tiles could be placed near the wetlands. Because each easement is unique in size, slope and soil type, distances are individualized for each easement.
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Long commonplace on Minnesota farms, drain tiles have become increasingly popular among North and South Dakota farmers and ranchers.
Installed on lands that once supported livestock, or crops such as barley and wheat, drain tiles in some instances, prepare Dakota lands for conversion to corn and soybeans. Some Dakota property owners also opt for pattern tiling, a form of drain-tile installation that accelerates surface water removal, giving landowners earlier access to croplands in spring, proponents say, while also encouraging crop growth.
Drought-tolerant corn and soybean seeds also have been developed that can produce crops on these lands, something that previously was considered impractical and unprofitable.
These developments have led some farmers and ranchers to support proposals that would allow them to repurchase wetland easements and convert them to croplands, an idea that so far has gone nowhere in Congress.
Some conservationists worry the FWS’ unexpected July 24 query, asking, among other questions, “How the Service should calculate drain tile setbacks when requested by a landowner,” might have been prompted by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, overseer of the FWS and a former North Dakota governor.
Scott Glup is a retired FWS wetland management district project leader in Litchfield, Minn., who oversaw protected wetlands in seven Minnesota counties. The “vast majority” of Minnesota farmers adhere to provisions of their FWS easements, he said.
“The rules about how close drain tiles can be to protected wetlands are important, because if the tiles are placed too close, they’ll drain the wetland from below or drain water that might have flowed into the wetland,” Glup said.
Scott Stephens, Ducks Unlimited’s director of prairie and boreal conservation, stationed in Rapid City, S.D., said about 30% of total U.S. duck pairs nest on the protected wetlands in question.
“From our perspective, we want to ensure that the Fish and Wildlife Service maintains a wetland asset that duck hunters paid for,” Stephens said.
As of Wednesday of last week, more than 41,000 comments had been received by the FWS on the drain tile issue. Most, no doubt, were from duck hunters and other conservationists who believe that a deal made should be a deal kept.
“Hunting,” Donald Trump Jr. once said, “forces a person to endure, to master themselves, even to truly get to know the wild environment. Actually, along the way, hunting and fishing makes you fall in love with the natural world. This is why hunters so often give back by contributing to conservation.”
Note to Don Jr.: Now’s the time to be a loud voice in your Dad’s ear.
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This story was originally published August 12, 2026 at 2:58 AM.