Substrate/Flooring for duck runs/pens???

[Kaessa]

Thanks for your question buff-goose-guy!

We will be operating in conjunction with a captive release program that is already established and has been shown to be successful. Furthermore this project is officially supported by federal and state permits and has been approved by animal care and use committee established to ensure ethical/proper treatment of research animals. Ducklings will not be raised to be dependent on human provision (direct contact/disturbance will be minimized particularly during early stages of life) and will be tracked upon release. Additionally, a majority of eggs collected from our wild population will be eggs from abandoned nests, i.e. eggs that would have failed to hatch otherwise. Egg salvage programs in many states aim to do exactly this in order to bolster population numbers and ensure that population of species such as the Wood Duck are more capable of dealing with large scale perturbations primarily caused by human activity (i.e. destruction and fragmentation of wetland/riparian habitat). One major goal of our research is to further inform, and hopefully improve, captive-release programs such as this which are used as a conservation management tactic in order to help prevent species extinction.

Hopefully this assuages some of your concerns, and I am happy to be transparent regarding our findings at the conclusion of this project.

Definitely looking forward to seeing what you find!