By 1900, ornithologists were writing the wood duck's obituary. "Becoming scarce, likely to be exterminated," one wrote in 1901.
Market hunting had decimated them for decades, fashionable hats being the primary culprit, and the clear-cutting of bottomland hardwood forests had stripped out the old trees with cavities they needed to nest.
The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 stopped the hunting. But the trees were still gone. Wood ducks nest in cavities and they can't make their own. By the 1930s the population was recovering but slowly, bottlenecked by the simple fact that there was nowhere to raise young.
In 1937, two biologists designed an artificial nest box sized for wood ducks. They put up 486 of them at a refuge in Illinois. The ducks moved in immediately. Word spread. Private landowners started building them and nailing them to trees above swamps and ponds across the country.
It took no federal program or coordinated campaign. Just people who knew wood ducks needed a box and had a free afternoon.
Today there are an estimated 3.5 million wood ducks across North America. The recovery is considered one of the great success stories in wildlife management, and it runs almost entirely on nest boxes built by ordinary people.
The box you nail up this weekend is the same intervention that pulled this species back from the edge.
SOURCES: Little Rock head coach Chris Curry has agreed to a new contract that includes a 5-year extension that takes him through 2031 at @LittleRockBSB, I'm told. Curry has guided the Trojans to a Regional Final and Super Regional over the past two seasons. More than well deserved for Curry.