The animal’s reproduction isn’t the only process that relies on a number of critical factors. Scientists view the health of the harlequin duck as an important indicator of the health of the environment because it’s one of the first to suffer from human-caused pollution and development. These ducks modified their behavior over thousands of years to take advantage of areas where other species couldn’t eke out a living. But a new dam, coal mine, or logging operation can alter a stream overnight—killing off insect larvae or just making the waters too murky to forage—leaving the harlequin without a source of food.
The eastern population—which ranges from southwest Greenland and Iceland to the eastern Canadian arctic and south to the Maritime Provinces—once numbered perhaps 10,000 individuals, but by the 1990s had fallen to a tenuous 1,000 or fewer. In 1990, the Canadian government listed the eastern harlequin as an endangered species and banned hunting, thought to be the primary threat to its survival. Its numbers appear to be rising in response, but the harlequin has yet to fully recover in the East.
The breeding range of the western harlequin extends from northeast Si-beria, across to arctic Canada, and south to the Rocky Mountain region of the United States. Estimates for the west-ern population once ranged as high as a million individuals and now hover around 250,000. But both historic and current counts are considered unreliable because the harlequin’s range is so vast and re-mote and so little is really known about this duck.
Yet researchers know enough to be concerned. Some surveys of coastal populations have shown localized declines; harlequins have disappeared entirely from certain areas of the United States’ northwestern interior. Populations in Colorado and California’s northern Sier-ra Nevadas disappeared decades ago. And in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, harlequins have stopped breeding in streams they formerly occupied. The duck is considered a “species of concern” in all of the Pacific Northwest states and is listed as a “sensitive species” by the U.S. Forest Service.
Conservation of the harlequin has been hindered by a paucity of information. Since the eastern population was listed as endangered, the need for information has become more apparent, but research funding tends to follow the larger charismatic mammals such as wolves and bears, and animals that are known to be in immediate jeopardy. The pitfalls inherent in this approach to wildlife conservation are well known to scientists at Glacier, who have watched species disappear entirely from the park while awaiting funding.
“The porcupine is pretty much gone from the park,” says Gniadek. Park managers overlooked the decline and disappearance of this animal largely because it was nocturnal and little was known of its habits. Proposals to attempt monitoring went unfunded in the ’80s and ’90s, and now it’s simply too late. So far, the unfortunate outcome of the porcupine’s story has not changed the funding outlook for animals like the harlequin.
“Funding for research and resource management in general has been a problem with the National Park Service,” says Riley McClelland, a retired biologist who spent 25 years in Glacier. The em-phasis here is on visitor use rather than landscape and wildlife preservation, he says. “You can see if a road has a pothole, but unless you do research, you don’t know if a species is in trouble.”
Gniadek agrees. He extends the analogy to funding repairs to Going-to-the-Sun Road, which winds through the heart of Glacier. The park has allocated several million dollars to fix the road but devoted relatively little for wildlife research, he says.
“If we applied the same resource- management principles to the roads that we do for wildlife, we would put off funding for the Going-to-the-Sun Road until it was falling off the mountain,” says Gniadek. Hard choices become routine when Washington’s decision makers cut park funding in favor of other priorities; the Bush administration’s federal budget proposal for the coming year cuts national park funding by $100 million.
All of this bodes poorly for the harlequin. A last-minute approach to species recovery is untenable for animals like this, whose low reproductive rates make rebounding from serious decline improbable. A catastrophic event can devastate the harlequin’s population for many years, as evidenced by the Exxon Valdez oil disaster in 1989, which spilled 11 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound, killing or injuring thousands of ducks. More than 15 years later, Prince William’s harlequin population has yet to recover.
As for the Glacier population, the health and size of the group remain undetermined. Gniadek estimates an average of 50 to 100 individuals in the park’s breeding population (an accurate count is difficult because survey results vary so much from year to year). Al-though volunteers are integral to continuing the most minimal level of harlequin study, the species needs the attention of professional biologists. An in-depth study using radio or satellite transmitters attached to individual animals is the only reliable way to measure the population. But lack of funding for the harlequin makes that avenue impossible, a fact that clearly troubles Gniadek.
“If we’re serious about protecting our resources, then we need to get serious about determining their status,” says Gniadek. “If we don’t know what they’re doing to begin with, we won’t know if they’re blinking out.”
And anyone who’s seen that plucky duck bobbing like a cork in whitewater Eden knows what a tragedy it would be for this painted mime to slip silently into oblivion.
Krista Schlyer is a freelance writer living outside Washington, D.C. Amy Grisak is a freelance writer living in Kalispell, Montana, near Glacier National Park.
