At the Bruce Museum, an exhibition of duck stamp art tells a 90-year-old story about how paintings can contribute to land preservation.
James Barron
Reporting from Greenwich, Conn.
You don’t have to be a conservationist or a hunter to marvel at the portraits at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Conn. Each one is of a duck. Some show ducks flying — mergansers, pintails, mallards and eiders. Some show ducks swimming. One shows a dog with a duck in its mouth.
The portraits of the ducks (and that retriever) were drawn or painted for stamps. Not postage stamps, but federal duck stamps that hunters who want to shoot waterfowl are required to buy along with their state licenses.
The revenue goes toward buying acreage for wildlife habitats. The government spends almost all of the money from the duck stamps on land acquisition — $1.2 billion in the 90 years since the first duck stamps were sold. Only the cost of printing the stamps has been deducted.
Image credit: Adam Grimm won this year’s federal duck painting contest with this painting of spectacled eiders. “There is no bigger prize in the world of wildlife art,” he said.Credit…
