In Passing:
Jenkins Built Conservation Partnerships with Farmers

George Crawford Jenkins, an agrologist who played an important role in expanding Delta’s impact on waterfowl and wetland conservation in the early 1990s, died Jan. 7. He was 94 years old.

Jenkins worked as a provincial agricultural extension agent in southern Manitoba before being hired in 1990 to run Delta Waterfowl’s newly established Prairie Farming Program. An avid waterfowl hunter who had grown up on a farm west of Shoal Lake, Manitoba, Jenkins served as a critical liaison between farmers and waterfowl conservation interests.

“He loved to hunt mallards and was a heckuva good shot,” said Jim Fisher, Delta’s vice president of Canadian policy. “Importantly, Crawford Jenkins brought the farmers’ perspectives to waterfowl conservation.”

Fisher, a master’s degree student for Delta from 1990 to 1992, worked with Jenkins to establish the Adopt-a-Pothole Program, an innovative, grassroots concept that connected duck hunters in the south to farmers on the prairie landscape where ducks hatched. Hunters “adopted” potholes by paying farmers not to drain or alter the wetlands and adjacent upland habitat that produce ducks.

“Jenkins led Delta’s initial foray into working with farmers to conserve breeding duck habitat to benefit ducks,” Fisher said. “The success of Adopt-a-Pothole set the table for Delta’s suite of voluntary, incentive-based conservation programs such as ALUS and GROW in Canada, as well as Working Wetlands in the United States.”

Strong conservation partnerships with farmers forged by Jenkins also helped launch Delta’s Hen House Program in 1991. Most of the early Hen Houses—nest cylinders mounted on poles over water in small wetlands—were placed on adopted potholes.

Today, Delta’s Hen House Program continues to thrive and grow. In Spring 2024, Delta Waterfowl had 12,250 Hen Houses throughout key breeding wetland habitat for mallards, with plans to add another 2,100 nest structures this winter. — Paul Wait