First off, I agree with what DU does. Everyone may not like it, but they are making efforts to ensure habitat. Yeah, they are doing big projects in Gum Cove, Black Lake, Cameron-Creole WS, but where else are they going to go. Most people don't have the land to support these projects, and these are also areas that were historically Marsh and are now open water.
The premise of terracing is that it will eventually create Marsh by capturing sediment in the terrace "field". I have done a lot of work on these terraces. They are effective at creating habitat on and around the terrace, and even make the area shallow enough to support widgeon grass. Lots of it.
DU will always make decisions that are unpopular with someone. That's just the way it is. But one cannot blame not having ducks on DU. I can look at the last few years as a good example. We had a mild winter up until January last year. It did not get cold enough up north to kill all the food for the ducks, so they didn't come down as soon. That being said, I saw ducks everywhere last year. They were spread out all over, because we had so much rain, there was finally food just about anywhere, so the ducks could spread out.
One more example of the good DU has done. After the BP oil spill, DU partnered with NRCS to provide funding to farmers to flood their fields for duck habitat because there was concern that the oil spill would do severe damage to duck habitat. Again, these were private landowners, but farmers were flooding up fields and providing habitat.
When a majority of the country is privately owned, you manage what you can. DU is making lemonade out of lemons. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't like lemonade.
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