From Summary: "The North American Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) is an expansive region that covers parts of five Midwestern states and three Canadian provinces. The region contains millions of wetlands that produce between 50–80% of the continent’s waterfowl population each year. Previous modeling efforts indicated that climate change would result in a shift of suitable waterfowl breeding habitat from the central PPR to the southeast portion of the region where over half of wetlands have been drained. The implications of adopting these projections would require a massive investment in wetland restoration in the southeastern PPR to sustain migratory waterfowl populations at harvestable levels. We revisited these projections using a newly developed model for simulating prairie-pothole wetland hydrology in combination with the most up-to-date climate model projections to estimate how future climate may impact the distribution of waterfowl-breeding habitat. We also presented our findings in changes to wet May ponds, which is a metric that is used by managers at the US Fish and Wildlife Service to estimate waterfowl breeding populations to establish harvest regulations. Based on the output of 32 climate models and 2 emission scenarios we found a projected change in wet May pond numbers from -23% to +.02% when comparing the most recent climate period (1989–2018) to the end of the 21st century (2070–2099). We also found no evidence that the distribution of wet May ponds will shift in the future. These results suggest that management and conservation strategies for wetlands in the PPR that focus on areas with the high densities of intact wetland basins support large numbers of breeding duck pairs and will likely be the most successful in maintaining habitats critical to continental waterfowl populations."