To a duck hunter in the marshes of southeast Louisiana, what happens in the prairie potholes of the upper Midwest makes all the difference. The Trump administration wants to end protections for such isolated wetlands.
"BURAS, La. — Two drake pintails swoop across the dawn sky toward a duck blind where Carl Boudreaux and Ryan Lambert are waiting.
Lambert's voice ricochets across the muddy water.
"Kill 'em, Carl!"
There are two shots. A duck falls.
The pintail had likely flown more than 1,000 miles to this swath of Mississippi River Delta. Nobody knows that better than Lambert, who's been guiding hunters and anglers into the marshes here for some 40 years.
When the ducks don't show up in the marshes in southeast Louisiana and the hunting is as bad as it's been this winter, Lambert blames farmers draining wetlands in the Prairie Pothole Region — 276,000 square miles pockmarked by shallow, wet depressions in the Upper Midwest and Canada — otherwise known as North America's "duck factory."
Prairie potholes could soon lose their Clean Water Act protections under a Trump administration proposal to erase coverage for wetlands lacking surface connections to larger waterways.
Lambert, 61, supports President Trump despite the administration's wetland proposal, but he wants Midwestern farmers to realize how their actions affect wildlife, the environment — and him — far downstream."
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