State agencies join forces to track and study Mississippi’s waterfowl

JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) – The next time you are checking out the wildlife in the Delta, you may notice a box specially made for birds. It’s called a Duck Box, but there is more to the boxes than just wildlife conservation.

Inmates at Parchman prison say it has been a labor of love building cypress boxes specifically designed to house wood ducks. They nest along flyways across Mississippi.

Parchman inmate carpenter, Irvin Forrest, said ”My great-granddad, my granddad, and uncles are carpenters, so I come from a long line of carpenters.”

The fruits of their labor, Wood Duck Boxes, are then placed in Delta locations like the William C. (Billy) Deviney Wildlife Management Area. It’s ten miles north of Indianola and managed as a waterfowl hunting area. Sam Franklin said there aren’t many natural nests in the Mississippi Delta anymore.

“So that’s what these are these are to supplement and help those indigenous ducks that we have in Mississippi Delta event stay in Mississippi to basically proliferate and make more ducks.”, said Franklin.

The Deviney WMA is one of 54 management areas in more than a half-million acres, but this study isn’t just for hunters and productive work for inmates. Wildlife agents are also tracking the ducks for the public’s health.

Roger Tankesley, WMA Biologist said, ”These days we have the bird flu, the high-pathogen bird flu. We’re trying to get an idea which direction these birds are moving during the off-season.”

Wildlife agents say they have tracked certain duck species all the way to South America which still fly back to Mississippi. Agents place small bands on the birds and use electronic GPS to follow their movements. It’s a study embraced by many private landowners, who are also helping fund it.

Kenny Morgan, of TC Energy said, ”You can see there’s a lot of people involved in making this happen here and we’re just proud to be able to support it financially.”

The team of inmates, agents and landowners hope their efforts will re-establish Wood Duck populations as well as predict migration, but even more important, wildlife biologists say tracking birds and the avian viruses they can carry has become very important in trying to prevent another coronavirus type outbreak.

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