Ducks Unlimited crosses $2 billion fundraising threshold in pursuit of preserving North America

In the race to protect North America's at-risk wetlands, Ducks Unlimited, along with its Canadian and Mexican counterparts, recently crossed a $2 billion mark in funds raised for large-scale wildlife conservation, well on the way towards the campaign's $3 billion goal by 2026.

The current campaign, "Conservation for a Continent," is the third campaign in the 21st century to raise billions.

Much of the funds raised, said Ducks Unlimited President Chuck Smith and CEO Adam Putnam, have come from philanthropic donations and government grants, as man-made threats to North America's wetlands continue to jeopardize the future of all breeds of waterfowl.

The story of how the organization has been able to execute billion-dollar campaigns is decades in the making.

"Since 1970, we've lost a third of all bird species in North America, across the board," said Putnam. "Only wetland species of birds have increased in population."

Headquartered in Memphis, the main Ducks Unlimited campus coordinates with field offices in all 50 states and in both U.S. border countries. While the emphasis is on protecting lands that nourish waterfowl populations, some 900 species of animals that rely on wetland ecosystems are also positively impacted for the better.

Ducks Unlimited distinguishes itself from other conservation-focused non-governmental organizations by both raising funds and executing conservation strategies.

"We actually move the dirt, we're not just here for advocacy," said Putnam. "And we're going to share what we know in engineering and designing and executing these projects.

The result of this work and corresponding achievements is increasing public and private partnerships; governments and corporations alike want the association with and knowledge of the organization now synonymous with best practices, Smith said.

An additional galvanizing factor is a growing awareness clean water is not infinite or guaranteed.

"Everybody's concerned about water now," Smith said. "And the work we're doing is focused on clean water as a benefit to society in general."

And while water is the organization's primary field of expertise, Ducks Unlimited is also engaging in carbon work by working with rice farmers to reduce methane emissions or conserving prairie land grasses that naturally capture carbon from the atmosphere and store it in roots and soil.

The combination of the factors the organization addresses is increasingly yielding government grants, Putnam said, because the results of the organization's work are tangible.

"It looks like planting hundreds of thousands of trees that are going to restore a bottomland hardwood forest similar to what used to channelize the Mississippi. It looks like working with farmers throughout the Mississippi Delta to modernize their rice production. In Louisiana, it looks like constructing terraces in the water that restore the sedimentation effect of the Mississippi River that then helps restore Louisiana's coastlines," Putnam said.

All of these efforts, Putnam said, must be done at a faster rate to mitigate the rapid onset of ecological changes in North America. And it's why crossing $2 billion in a fundraising campaign is so significant, it represents immediate efforts to preserve more for those who follow us.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Memphis-based Ducks Unlimited surpasses $2 billion fundraising goal