Duck regulations leaning liberal
Hunters were expecting moderate season
Sunday, July 24, 2005
By Bob Marshall
Outdoors editor
"You can't make ducks without water" is one of the oldest adages in waterfowl management, but it may never be more relevant than this year. Although the number of mallards returning to key breeding grounds dropped by nearly 10 percent in the past year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is offering hunters liberal hunting season regulations once again, apparently because of a flood of rain that helped wipe drought from the Canadian prairies.
Although the Service has scheduled a Friday press conference to announce final regulations, state waterfowlers managers attending flyway council meetings this weekend were alerted that the preliminary results from the formula the agency uses to set hunting seasons -- Adaptive Harvest Management -- pointed to the liberal option once again.
For the Mississippi Flyway, which includes Louisiana, that would mean a 60-day season with a limit of six birds per day, the same rules that have been in effect since 1997. However, there would be significant changes from last season:
-- Instead of having a smaller number of days to hunt pintail within the larger season, hunters would be allowed to take one pintail per day all season. The agency said an increase in the number of pintails on the breeding grounds, plus a prediction of a large production this year, allows the change, even though the species' population remains 38 percent below its long-term average.
-- The agency is recommending reducing the harvest of scaup (dos gris) by 25 percent, based on their continued decline.
The federal frameworks are the boundaries within which state agencies must work. States are allowed to set more conservative regulations, but they cannot be more liberal. The Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission will announce Louisiana seasons at its Aug. 4 meeting in Baton Rouge.
As late as last Wednesday, most waterfowl managers were uncertain if the Service would be recommending liberal seasons once again, or move to a more conservative regime for the first time since AHM was adopted in 1997. The formula recommends one of four sets of hunting regulations: liberal (60 days, six ducks per day), moderate (45 and five), restrictive (30 and three) and closed.
AHM relies heavily on two figures from spring nesting area surveys: the number of breeding ponds in Canada, and the number of mallards in key Canadian and U.S. breeding areas.
Early in the spring many hunters expected a drop to at least moderate regulations. The northern U.S. and southern Canadian prairies received little snowfall last winter, and even less rain since then. Indeed, when the USFWS and the Canadian Wildlife Service began their surveys in early May, many breeding grounds seemed drier than last year.
And there clearly were fewer mallards back from the wintering grounds. Biologists said that could be because of several factors: More birds may have been killed by hunters last year; many early arriving ducks may have over-flown traditional breeding areas because they were dry early in the spring, or production last year was low because of poor nesting conditions.
But when the rains finally started around mid-May, they came heavy and have not really stopped. By the end of May the Canadian pond count had soared to 56 percent more than last year, from 2.5 million to 3.9 million ponds. Much of that improvement was in southern Alberta, which hadn't seen much rain for more than six years. But there was also significant improvement in the heart of nesting country in Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
By the end of May, waterfowl managers found themselves facing an unusual situation: Although there were fewer mallards back, there was a chance production figures for mallards, as well as other species, could be higher than a year ago.
That's because the heavy rain increased the size and number of ponds as well as the amount of upland cover between nesting sites and ponds and on the fringes of the ponds. Thicker cover makes it easier for ducks to avoid predators, which means more ducklings will live to fly south. The good conditions also mean ducks that had nests destroyed by predators are more likely to re-nest.
Bob Bloom, of the USFWS Migratory Bird Office, explained.
"Thicker upland cover means hens won't have to run their brood from nests to ponds over open ground in full view of predators, which is what they often have to do during dry times," he said. "That means more of the brood will survive. And once they get to water, they have more ponds, larger ponds and more feed on the ponds for the young.
"And during dry periods, hens that lose a nest to predators early in the season won't attempt to re-nest if the danger is too high. This year they won't have that worry. Early nesters like mallards and teal that lose nests had the opportunity to re-nest, and probably did.
"So that could show up in increased production."
And that means hunters could see a larger fall flight this year than last, even though the number of breeders was lower.
John Devney, Senior Vice-President of Delta Waterfowl Foundation, said there were reasons for concern, and optimism.
"We're concerned because we can't remember when we've had fewer mallards the same year we've had an increase in ponds," he said. "Typically, one follows the other. So the low number of mallards could be the result of poor production of the last few years."
The optimism comes from the heavy rains and current scenes on the prairies around his Bismarck, N.D., headquarters.
"But this rain we've been getting may make (the low mallards numbers) moot as far as duck production is concerned," he said. "Right now some parts of the prairie look like one big brooding area.
"There's no telling what that will mean to the final count, but it's a positive sign, and it's all because of that water."
In fact there is no longer a final count on waterfowl production. Congressional budget cuts several years ago ended the annual production surveys once conducted by the two countries. The hunting regulations the Service will release this week will not reflect production. Instead it will be an estimate of how many ducks hunters can kill without having a negative impact on the sustainability of the resource.
State and waterfowl managers also stressed the regulations selected are not a prediction of the quality of hunting waterfowlers will experience in their areas this fall.
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks