Fish and Wildlife Service celebrates June 28 release of federal duck stamp

By Allen Abel, Washington Correspondent

“This is the most successful conservation program in the history of conservation, and until somebody proves that wrong, I am going to keep saying it,” Jerome Ford, assistant director, migratory birds program, for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, said during the June 28 first-day ceremony for the 2024 federal duck stamp and junior duck stamp at Bass Pro Shops in Hanover, Md.

The event, situated at the confluence of the flyways of Chesapeake Bay and Baltimore-Washington Thurgood Marshall International Airport, drew an eager gathering of more than 100 collectors and conservationists.

The new $25 duck stamp by artist Chuck Black of Belgrade, Mont., the 91st in the series that began in 1934, features a northern pintail. A painting of a king eider by 17-year-old Emily Lian of Oregon graces the $5 junior duck stamp.

For the first time, a physical duck stamp will be mailed in March 2025 to everyone who purchases an electronic stamp before the end of the fall hunting season. For more details about the implementation of the Duck Stamp Modernization Act, see the story in the July 1 issue of Linn’s.

“This is all about people connecting to nature,” said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director Martha Williams.

She said that the program has raised more than $1.2 billion during the past nine decades, money that has helped to conserve more than 6 million acres of wetland and grassland habitat. Ninety-eight percent of the proceeds of each stamp sale goes to the Migratory Bird Conservation Fund.

“At a time when everything seems to be getting more complicated, the duck stamp program reminds us of the value of simplicity,” said Mike Brasher, senior waterfowl scientist at Ducks Unlimited.

“The duck stamp program is our best way to contribute to conservation,” Brasher said.

Lian, a 2024 graduate of Sunset High School in Portland, Ore., will enter the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the fall. She told the audience that she had been entering the annual junior duck stamp art contest since she was 7 and had placed third in the national contest last year.

Being selected as the winning artist was “unfathomable to me,” Lian said. Her goal, she said, was to represent “the confident, regal bearing” of the drake king eider shown on the stamp.

Black, who earned a degree in wildlife biology before committing to art as a full-time profession a decade ago, said that he had been purchasing and collecting duck stamps since childhood and that winning what is often called the only federally regulated art contest in the country was “a dream come true.” His oil painting was chosen from a field of 199 entries.

The 2024 national junior duck stamp art contest-winning conservation message by 16-year-old Kaitlin Garant of Nevada states, “Conserving is our responsibility, a reflection of our past, present, and future.”

The message contest “encourages students to express in words the spirit of what they have learned through classroom discussions, research, and planning for their Junior Duck Stamp Contest entries,” according to the Fish and Wildlife Service.

During the June 28 event, Williams announced that the 2024 federal duck stamp art contest for the 2025 federal duck stamp will be held Sept. 19-20 at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Conn.

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