More than 20 years ago the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced the adoption of “The North American Waterfowl Management Plan,” a joint American-Canadian effort designed to guide waterfowl management. Its purpose was to maintain an abundance of waterfowl well into the 21st Century. The 1986 plan has been periodically tweaked and remains in effect today.

The plan’s objectives include population goals for each of the 10 species of ducks counted in the North American breeding-ground survey. The goals represent the average annual population of each species counted in the 1970s, a decade when ducks were viewed as sufficiently abundant to satisfy most hunters.

In the spring of 2008, five of the 10 surveyed species fell below the plan’s population goals, suggesting a need to examine long-term population trends to determine where we are headed and whether waterfowl management will meet its population goals in the future.

Our analysis will examine the years 1997-2008. The year 1997 is key, for it marks the date when a competing managerial strategy known as Adaptive Harvest Management became ascendant. AHM’s stated goal is to maximize the mallard kill. To achieve this goal, it breached the regulatory dike and brought into being a flood of regulatory expansions – longer seasons, larger bag limits, earlier opening dates and later closing dates. It justified these changes by concluding that to maximize the mallard kill, the optimum mallard breeding population should be reduced to 5.2 million, compared to NAWMP’s goal of 8.2 million.

What impact have AHM-induced regulatory changes had on both mallards and other, nontarget species? We begin by looking at potholes, mathematically regressing the annual datapoints to create a straight line, a stark portrayal of the long-term trend.

The flat trendline tells us that northern prairies potholes on the northern prairie breeding grounds reflected average conditions from 1997-2008. A long-term lack of water on the prairies therefore cannot be cited as a cause for a breeding population decline.

A startlingly different picture emerges when we look at the five species of ducks whose populations were below the NAWMP population goal during the 2008 breeding-ground survey. We begin with mallards.

The all-important trendline not only reveals the North American mallard breeding population has suffered a steady, long-term decline, it warns us that our breeding flocks are likely to decline further in the years ahead. When coupled with declining rates of nest success, the long-term outlook becomes gloomy indeed. We face a dreaded double whammy -- fewer and fewer mallards producing fewer and fewer young, resulting in smaller and smaller mallard fall flights.

How have the other four sub-par species fared?                  

As you can see in the above graphs, all five species are in long-term decline, some more so than others, but declines nonetheless. And this has occurred during a period of average water on the northern prairies.

In the 1970s, when the population goals were set, these five species accounted for 69 percent of the surveyed North American breeding population. Last spring these five species totaled only 50 percent of the continental population. Three of the five – mallards, pintails and canvasbacks – represent waterfowling’s most desirable species. (The fourth premier species – the black duck -- is equally troubled, but not counted in the mid-continent survey.)

Can we assign blame for this state of affairs to Adaptive Harvest’s insane emphasis on maximizing the mallard kill, an emphasis that has resulted in the adoption of the longest seasons and highest bag limits in more than half a century? Has the misguided effort to shoot down our mallard flock caused collateral damage to other species?

Some would argue this is not the case, citing special restrictions designed to protect beleaguered pintails, scaup and canvasbacks (as well as mallards and black ducks.). This is a hollow riposte. All of these species are biologically different, occupying different breeding habitats, migrating on different schedules, concentrating on different staging and wintering grounds. Only liberalized hunting regulations cross all biological boundaries and offer a reasonable explanation for the multi-species state of affairs.

Moreover, even if non-hunting causes are largely to blame, no scientist can state flatly that Adaptive Harvest’s liberalized regulations have not aided and abetted the long-term decline of all the aforementioned non-mallard species.

It is important to note the breeding population trends for these five species are long-term. They offer us a glimpse into the future, for the downward slope of each trendline is unlikely to change in the immediate years ahead. The all-important trendlines predict we face an increasingly bleak future.

Why have proponents of the North American Waterfowl Management Plan remained silent in the face of this building disaster? Why haven’t they demanded we make greater efforts to meet our population goals? Why haven’t they strongly argued that we deep-six Adaptive Harvest’s wanton bloodlust and reduce season lengths, restrict bag limits and constrict the opening and closing season framework dates to give more protection to mallards and to reduce the collateral damage to other species? Why haven’t they demanded a prohibition on spinning-wing decoys, which can be deadlier than baiting?  Why haven’t they demanded we focus on rebuilding our breeding flocks instead of increasing our kill?

The future is ours to decide. The downward-sloping trendlines give us warning. Time is running out. Some astute thinkers are concerned that we might have waited too long to demand change, that it might be too late to reverse our declining fortunes by appointing conservation-minded managers who would reflect sportsmen’s values by focusing on restoring and preserving an abundance of waterfowl.
 
Only one thing is certain: History will issue its judgment. Will it conclude we promoted to positions of managerial authority well-intentioned but naïve numbers crunchers and populations modelers with little or no field experience? Will it decide we elevated to positions of authority shameless killers who reflected our own bloodlust? Will it ultimately judge waterfowl conservation a well-intentioned, but doomed-from-the-start experiment?