“Why are we critical of waterfowl management when many professionals and hunters seem satisfied with the status quo? Simply stated, we believe that hunters may be killing too many ducks and we are concerned that this is a risk to traditional duck hunting, something that has been central to our lives. We present our critique as experienced hunters who also claim to be knowledgeable about the biology and management of ducks.”

With these words two extraordinary biologists – Norm Seymour and Art Hawkins – declare why they are presenting their views on the current state of waterfowl management. Their analysis provides a unique historical and biological perspective.

Hawkins, 92, represents the first generation of North American waterfowl biologists. He began his career in the late 1930s alongside such contemporaries as H. Albert Hochbaum, Frank C. Bellrose, Walt Crissey, Frosty Anderson and John Lynch. He helped pioneer the development of the continental waterfowl surveys, and for years was the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service representative to the Mississippi Flyway. He has studied ducks and hunted the length and breadth of the continent.

Seymour, 64, represents modern waterfowl biology’s second generation, a former Delta student who became a biology professor at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia. He has spent a lifetime studying and publishing scientific papers related to Atlantic Coast ducks. He has hunted waterfowl throughout North America, and in Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. He recently combined his biological knowledge and hunting experiences in a critically acclaimed book: Living A Dream: The Education of a Duck Hunter.

We highly commend this article to anyone concerned about the future of ducks and duck hunting. We further recommend you first print and then read from the printed copy.

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We begin by listing the following assumptions and statements that we believe are valid:

• Widespread reports by hunters of poor fall flights suggest a real decline in numbers of ducks.

• Hunting may be contributing to low numbers by slowing or preventing the recovery of species like pintails and scaup.

• Current scientific knowledge is inadequate to precisely regulate the harvest of ducks across the four flyways.

• Managing for healthy populations trumps attempts to maximize the kill.

• Hunter satisfaction for most arises from seeing – not killing – large numbers of ducks.

• A positive future for duck hunting is linked to having more ducks.

• Production can be increased by sending more ducks back to the breeding grounds.

• Population models are useful management tools but are dependent on a quality of data that may never be attainable.

In general, our guiding beliefs reflect Aldo Leopold’s wildlife management philosophy that to sustain a huntable population of any species, hunting regulations must restrict the kill to those animals surplus to the breeding population. More specifically, our comments focus on the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) of 1918 which defines, on behalf of the public, the legal mandate and responsibilities of waterfowl management.

The Act became law of the land on July 31, 1918, when President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed that “the Secretary of Agriculture is authorized and directed ...having due regard to the zones of temperature and to the distribution, abundance, economic value, breeding habits, and times and lines of migratory flight of such birds, to determine when, to what extent, if at all, and by what means it is compatible with the convention to allow hunting….”

These words are critically important. They legally mandate that waterfowl hunting seasons be closed unless the Secretary, now the Secretary of the Interior, recommends they be opened. This is key, for it tells us by implication that duck hunting is a privilege, not a right or entitlement.

Albert Day, an early director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, built on this foundation to explain in words everyone could understand the purpose of hunting regulations. They are designed “first to protect the resource and second to give everyone who hunts as near an equal break with his neighbor as possible,” he said.

There is no reference, stated or implied, in either the Act itself or Day’s interpretation that reflects today’s Adaptive Harvest Management (AHM) goal to “maximize cumulative harvest over the long-term” of mid-continent mallards. (AHM also ignores such concepts as equity, quality recreation and high hunter satisfaction that are dependent on seeing lots of ducks.)

The laudatory objectives reflected in the treaty and outlined by Day ultimately shaped North American waterfowl management, a system generally based on sound and extensive ecological research and widely recognized as having no equal. But it is not without problems.

Achieving a fall-flight goal of 100 million ducks across a vast continent is enormously challenging, a task made more difficult by management’s necessity to maintain abundant breeding populations while providing an annual harvest of ecologically diverse and dynamic species. We question whether any management system can meet such a formidable challenge, even if it has the knowledge and freedom to manage ducks purely on a scientific basis. This suggests a need to act cautiously and flexibly.

We must keep in mind that, as sophisticated as the North American system is, its science is incomplete. This is coupled with political interference at many levels that historically has confounded science-based initiatives.

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In its early years the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the four flyway councils recognized the gaps in its biological knowledge and its limited ability to significantly increase natural production. Management relied on common sense and believed it could preserve an abundance of waterfowl by regulating hunting and thereby limiting the kill.

Through the mid-1970s hunting regulations were based on the assumption that ducks killed by hunters added to natural mortality and influenced the size and recovery potential of a breeding population. Then a study that profoundly influenced waterfowl management suggested that hunters mostly killed the “doomed surplus” – the ducks that would naturally die. The hunter kill was viewed as compensatory. As the hunter kill increased, natural mortality decreased, up to a certain ill-defined threshold. This death exchange was based on the theory that habitat can support only a finite number of ducks. Any ducks in excess of that number – the so-called surplus – are doomed. This prompted many to view a “doomed duck” not shot by hunters as a wasted bird and provided the biological rationale for today’s goal of maximizing the kill.

The focus on compensatory mortality triggered a debate that has been one of the most contentious and divisive in waterfowl management history. A major omission in the compensatory argument is that the carrying capacity for any North American habitat is unknown and perhaps cannot confidently ever be known. This is true even for prairie mallards, our most-studied duck population. This created a further problem when management assumed mallard population dynamics reflected those of other species with different life-histories and habitat requirements.

In 1995 when Adaptive Harvest Management became the basis for setting regulations, prairie mallards remained the pivotal species. Compensatory mortality provided the biological underpinning that allowed for the most liberal hunting regulations in the past half-century. This reflects the fact that much of the banding and habitat data that forms AHM’s foundation is decades old, a time when the productive potential of the Canadian prairies was much greater than today.

We should note AHM models for ducks other than prairie and Atlantic Flyway mallards are nonexistent. They are – if attainable at all – years away from being workable harvest guides. The reason is the lack of field studies that provide the essential biological data.

AHM’s liberal hunting regulations were adopted when the prairie drought of the late 1980s and early 1990s was breaking. The mallard population began recovering, but some once-abundant species did not. The stagnant or declining populations of some species should have prompted management to question why it acted so hastily to liberalize the hunting regulations. It would have been better to observe how troubled populations reacted to the end of the drought.

The hasty liberalization reflected an entrenched belief that abundant water on the prairie and bountiful fall-flights go hand in hand. While generally true, this belief ignores the fact the prairie has lost much of its former potential to explosively produce ducks. No longer does abundant water mean bumper crops of all species.

Another feature of the AHM process is stabilized regulations. Everyone likes them because they are simple to understand and permit planning ahead. Researchers like them because they make it easier to evaluate the effect of hunting regulations. But when major declines occur and regulations remain liberal, as is occurring today under AHM, management must question its actions.

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Today’s conflicts are reflected in meetings of flyway councils, which were established to provide diverse viewpoints related to hunting regulations. Council meetings too often degenerate into a battle of wills between liberal- and conservative-minded members, rather than focusing on doing what’s right for ducks. The councils are dominated by members who too often vote in favor of their jurisdictions/constituents, sometimes in the most blatant political way. This has allowed for the continuation of liberal regulations that favor hunter opportunity over the welfare of ducks.

The Mississippi Flyway provides a good example of how AHM has worked against both the intent of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the long-term interests of duck hunters. When we compare AHM’s first five-year period (1996-2000) to the preceding five years (1991-1995), we find dramatic changes in hunting pressure and harvest.

The Mississippi Flyway data shows:

• The number of active adult hunters increased from 522,000 to 648,000

• The number of days hunted increased from 5,981,864 to 7,029,671

• The average number of days an individual hunted increased from 8.79 to 10.54

• The average kill per hunter per season increased from 7.09 to 11.69

• The regular season duck kill essentially doubled, increasing from 3,733,580 to 7,343,060.

No one knows if this increased kill constituted an over-harvest of some species. It apparently did not for prairie mallards. The mallard kill during the latter time period increased by 80 percent, the breeding population increased by 50 percent and survival rates remained reasonably constant. But mallards compose only about 40 percent of the total duck harvest, which doubled under AHM.

Could other species like the pintail and scaup absorb additional mortality without harming their recovery potential? AHM’s focus on the mallard, the most adaptable, resilient and reproductively fit species, raises the question of whether our regulations should conform to statutory requirements to protect more vulnerable species. No one knows if some of the 3.5 million ducks represented in the increased kill might have boosted the breeding population and contributed to a larger fall-flight, but the odds favor this possibility.

Mississippi Flyway Council members appear to have forgotten Day’s exhortation and statements in the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statements (SEIS) of 1975 and 1989 that reiterate the MBTA’s intent to limit the kill to levels compatible with the ability of each species to maintain its population, to limit the taking of species when there is a reasonable possibility that hunting will reduce their numbers, and to provide equitable hunting opportunity.

A second major consequence in the Mississippi Flyway involved the shift in harvest distribution. AHM gave southern states a much greater share of the flyway’s total kill. This caused an outcry in the north, where southern hunters were perceived as being politically privileged.

In the face of widespread criticism, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service caved in to political pressures and sought to restore the historical harvest distribution. Instead of canceling the extended season and returning to traditional season frameworks, the service offered northern states, by means of compensation, an earlier opening. The Service was, in effect, encouraging northern states to break away from their traditional conservatism and kill more ducks. With longer seasons, higher bag limits, earlier opening dates in the north and later closing dates in the south, ducks were the obvious losers.

It soon became apparent to hunters all along the flyway that they were losing. Dissatisfaction over seeing low numbers of ducks was widespread. A few hunters made the connection between declining duck populations and liberalized regulations. Many who had largely embraced AHM were reluctant to believe the gun had caused the decline, but others suggested that not only might it have contributed to the decline, it might also be slowing or even preventing recovery. A minority asked if the damage was irreversible and wondered if pintails and scaup would ever recover.

To date, biology has no firm answer to resolve the differences of opinion.

While hunters squabbled, Finnish researchers in 2004 published a paper entitled, Ecological Basis of Sustainable Hunting: Is the Prevailing Paradigm of Compensatory Mortality Still Valid? Their analysis of USFWS data suggested that hunting mortality may now be adding to the natural mortality of prairie mallards. “There has been a shift in the evidence from supporting compensatory mortality hypothesis to supporting the additive mortality hypothesis,” they stated. They viewed this with alarm, especially in light of reports that mallard flights appear to have decreased. They acknowledged the scientific strengths of our management system, including a tacit endorsement of AHM, but pointed to the need for more research to adequately understand how hunting regulations affect mallard populations.

Perhaps most telling is their statement that North American biologists acknowledge knowing virtually nothing about the actual mechanisms underlying possible compensatory mortality in mallards. This is particularly significant because the mallard is a species that we have been intensively studying for 70 years and the species we know most about.

The Finns warn that ecological systems like those influencing ducks are prone to change, explaining, “It is difficult to build realistic harvest models if the necessary biological information is lacking and one has to rely on untested assumptions.” They conclude that managers seldom know enough about the actual biological mechanisms underlying population processes to manage effectively.

To us, the bottom line seems clear. North American waterfowl management must improve production if we are to sustain annual harvests at acceptable levels far into the future. We need to better understand issues related to carrying capacity and the impact of hunting on population dynamics. We should assume hunting may negatively impact stocks until it is conclusively proved otherwise. We should act cautiously and set regulations that clearly protect all species. We must send more ducks back to the breeding grounds and boost juvenile production to increase the size of today’s beleaguered fall flights.