I do my informal, unscientific survey every spring about this time, checking with the field people I know to get an idea of local waterfowl production. My survey covers wetlands managers, rice farmers and various field biologists, in addition to my own observations, carefully conducted to cover the same properties at about the same time every spring.

In the latter regard, I take the lead of the official counters. Just as they say that their consistent transect surveys give them a good handle on comparative spring numbers, even with a twenty percent acknowledged error factor, my observation also cover the same ground to give a sense of comparative change. If it works for them, why can’t it work for me and other committed amateurs who practice the same methodology?

Although I examine and get reports from a far more selective and limited area, the subjective component of the analysis could not be larger than that of the official count. After all, twenty percent cannot be passed off as an insignificant error factor, even in a field beset by the eccentric imponderables of supposedly scientific waterfowl management.

But those imponderables bit me last year. I saw a bountiful production season, based on a wet spring with explosive grass growth, widely distributed brood water from the heavy runoff and what appeared to be an unusual proliferation of clutches. Indeed, I saw hens with ducklings in areas that had been devoid of such life for at least ten years. Farmer friends reported the same phenomenon, while struggling to get their crops planted on soggy ground, taking advantage of every tiny break between unseasonable weather events.

Based on those observations, I wrote a prediction for a strong hunting season in California, particularly for local mallards, even while all the signs from the mid-continent flashed ominously, belying the “liberal” framework that the AHM black box emitted.

Events disproved my prediction. The California mallard kill dropped by roughly ten percent from the previous season, based on refuge check-out station counts. The regulators believe that those counts will closely parallel the data generated by the fed surveys published later in the year. And the mid-continent experience could hardly have been worse.

This year, I intend to leave prediction to the so-called experts – not least because our dry and early spring has created an ominous situation. Conditions in the field look a lot worse than they did last year at this time – but I’m not going to say anything.

Meanwhile, the news rolls in from all over the world. Honeybees vanish without a trace. The hives turn up empty altogether – or with only a queen and a handful of drones. No dead bodies testify to a plague of some sort or an infestation of mites. The bees simply fly off somewhere and don’t return.

Much of the food crop depends upon the bees for the pollen transfers essential to production of mature fruits and vegetables. Orchardists suffer the most directly, but others are hurt as well. Only the bees can get the job of procreation done. As an ever increasing number of beekeepers lose their swarms, farmers resort to desperate measures, importing beekeepers and hives from across the country, hoping that their minions won’t disappear until they have performed their function for at least one more season. No one knows why the bees disappear – although Europe and parts of Asia suffer from the same or worse.

A few German scientists theorize that cell phone transmissions have disoriented the bees’ delicate navigational systems, sending them into confusion and death. They project the extinction of the insects in their country within four to ten years. What an irony that would be – the world’s food supply threatened by our modern addiction to wireless idle chatter and the instant messaging exchange of bad jokes. Talk about a bad joke.

But what does this have to do with waterfowl? Maybe nothing. It strikes me, however, that if our natural science cannot find an answer to a situation with far more profound implications for the welfare of the human race than anything that has to do with waterfowl management, we delude ourselves when we expect more from the scientists in the field of our interest. A well-proved axiom applies: Start from a delusional premise and any product of such a thought process will conform to reality only by the merest coincidence.

The natural world simply does not sit still for the dictates of the laboratory, nor does it dance to the rhythm of mathematical formulae. We do our scientists a disservice by expecting more than they can possibly deliver – and they pay us back in kind when they or their supporters claim the power to live up to those expectations.

Moreover, science is a tool, not a philosophy, not an end in itself. Mastering method – even where method submits to mastery – doesn’t produce a principle, a goal, a moral or ethical imperative.

All of which brings us back to the hundred million dollar question: why do we “manage” waterfowl? Why try to create an ecology conducive to retaining them as part of our environment in these modern times? For the recreational pastime of attempting to kill them – or for some larger purpose, such as Leopold’s land ethic, to which hunting provides an avenue but where the kill is not the primary goal?

Until we face that question squarely, debate it openly and reach a consensus, we will engage in the same short-sighted, sideshow battles, year after year, while the birds decline inexorably, while the Prairie Pothole Region produces ever fewer birds for reasons we cannot divine, while the skies overhead come to resemble those hives from which all but a few of the bees have mysteriously disappeared.

To even begin the necessary exercise, we must acknowledge the truth. And even that seems impossible. People who raise these question face disdain and accusation, to which I can testify. To air dissent from the prevailing killer philosophy fuels the fires of the anti-hunters we are told – as though the dissent created the problem rather than the conspicuous failures that the dissenters seek to expose. When the boulder from the cliff above falls toward you, do you prevent the catastrophe by denying the boulder or the effect that gravity has on it?

Yet that is the equivalent of what we are told. Express no disagreement or even a question. Follow the leaders quietly, even when they lead over the cliff of disaster, because pointing to a safer, more prudent course creates argument and comforts our enemies. Thus, do those who would gag dissent invoke the image of the circular firing squad, played out to the delight of our adversaries, the anti-hunters, who supposedly take comfort and energy from our failures as managers and as conservationists.

As conservationists, for that is the key. Unless we are so perceived, the general population will shut us down someday. That is the principle – conservation as applied to our field – for which our science should serve as handmaiden.

Just as the Hippocratic oath enjoins doctors to first: “Do No Harm,” prudence dictates that we adopt the same approach to our birds. But if we want to preserve our sport, we have an even more compelling reason today.

It is worthwhile to note that when I started practicing law in 1960, the environmental movement did not exist. Certainly, the mosaic of statutes, regulations and court decisions that we have today would have been unthinkable then, utterly beyond the imagination. I work in that field, dealing with regulations that apply to land use, conservation, endangered species, water law and related matters. And from the perspective of 47 years of total immersion, I can testify to a key fact. We are in the midst of a profound cultural shift – a tipping point as Malcolm Gladwell described the phenomenon in his brilliant and seminal book

Urban planners today emphasize “the new urbanism,” development concepts that promote in-fill, mixed use, pedestrian friendly projects and discourage those traditional forms that rely on the automobile. Air and water quality regulations become more stringent by the year, riding the wave of general consensus. Corporations like Pepsico – a company that makes billions of dollars selling colored water and salty snacks – militantly advocate for “green buildings,” designed for energy efficiency, reduced water usage and emissions, even though such concepts have absolutely nothing to do with its core business.

Pepsico is far from unique in this. The business section of the May 19, 2007 New York Times carried a front page story about a 100 mpg hybrid that GM hopes to introduce by 2010. The executive who made the announcement was none other than Robert Lutz, “Maximum Bob,” the promoter of the muscle car. As recently as three years ago, he derided the Prius as a “publicity stunt,” soon to be discarded, and praised the Corvette as the best car in GM’s line. The same section contained another front page story on a major development concern going back into sugar cane for ethanol on Maui – and commitments by big city mayors to adopt global warming regulations whether the national administration acts or not. Every day, the craze for organic food intensifies. Outfits like Whole Foods insist on controlling the temperature in their lobster tanks to reduce stress on the animals in their last hours before they meet the pot. Humane treatment of laboratory animals has become the province of the main stream, not just the radical fringe.

What do these circumstances and events tell us? The customers, employees and citizens demand these actions. Those who provide goods and services feel the shift in the wind because their livelihoods hang in the balance. More and more of our citizens militantly demand such things, just as they have become hooked on the threat they perceive in global warming and the need to promote alternative energy. Farmers rush into corn for ethanol. Corn was a money-loser as recently as two years ago. Wind farms sprout on ridges where local zoning recently prohibited such development. If you want a Prius or other hybrid, you go on a waiting list for many months. Even muscle car advocates like Bob Lutz can see the writing on the wall, bending to the new market imperatives for the most basic of reasons – survival of the corporation he helps run.

Only time will tell if all this makes sense – but that is not the point. The point is an inflamed, activist mentality sweeping the land as never before. We have become more and more a nation of professed conservationists, people who think in those terms every minute of every day and demand that those around them do so as well, people who are not shy about foisting their world view on others through legislation – by initiative and activism, if the elected representatives are a bit slow on the uptake.

If you disagree, think back 10 years. Think of the restrictions on smokers that exist today and did not exist then. Why? Because of increased sensitivity to “pollution” and health risk.

If you wanted to invest in a mutual fund that held only “green” stocks, could you do it ten years ago? Perhaps two such funds existed then. They were small, considered “cute,” slightly bizarre, primarily for the surviving unreconstructed ‘60s hippies. You have dozen of choices today, in the mainstream, promoted by most of the major companies in that business – and they manage multiple billions.

Did anyone other than a gaggle of far-out scientists talk about global warming a decade ago? Now we have front page articles and features on the television news on a daily basis. (How much higher would Dubya’s approval ratings be today if he had embraced global warming two years ago? Will he ever overcome his legacy of disdainful denial?) And then, of course, there’s gasoline at $4.00 per gallon, sending its message to the place where it hurts the most, every week for the vast majority who need autos in daily life.

What does this have to do with waterfowl and our sport of hunting them? Simply this: if we, as waterfowlers, are not seen by the general public as conservationists, as true stewards of the resource, we can expect to be overwhelmed and lose our sport at the hands of the non-hunting majority fired up today as never before on a simple, conservation message that our well-heeled adversaries will be only too happy to promote. We cannot afford to be perceived as insensitive to the concerns of the non-hunting public.

And yet our leaders seem dedicated to muzzling that conservation message as applied to us, concentrating instead on kill, longer seasons, higher bag limits, “hunting opportunity,” striving to slake the avarice of the commercial interests that serve that segment of our numbers. We make no effort to educate hunters to the importance of sportsmanship, fair chase, our traditions, avoiding the practices conducive to crippling and avoiding gross and boorish offense to public sensibilities that include heightened concern for the welfare of animals in a personal and humanistic sense. Wrongheaded as that sensibility might be in its more extreme manifestations, it is a fact of life today. It seems ever more clear that to suppress the conservation ethic in this day and time within our circles is like the Captain of the Titanic telling his lookout to shut up about that damned iceberg.

Specifics? Join me in this little nightmare. Something like a televised tame buffalo hunt or one of those obscene goose shoot videos we all have seen aired on 60 Minutes. The anti-hunters use it like a match in the gasoline of current environmental sensitivity. “Those Neanderthals kill for the fun of it. They’re killing birds that belong to all of us, defenseless, innocent creatures. They’re using electronics and modern technology to assist them in the slaughter, depriving the birds of any chance, etc., etc. They cripple close to half the birds they shoot – and those terrified victims fly off or swim off to die slowly in agony. They call it ‘fair chase’ but it would only be fair if the birds could shoot back, etc., etc.”

What’s our answer? A recitation of the compensatory kill theory? The creed of the nineteenth century English patrician: “we gave the birds life (through support for habitat, etc.,) so their lives belong to us?” Good luck with that. Those arguments have traction, if ever, only among a segment of the hunting fraternity. They would play with the general public only when nobody notices. If not over yet, those days soon will be. When the public worries about the stress caused to captured lobsters due to the temperature in their tank at the supermarket and yell at anyone who lights up in public, our story plays to a tougher and tougher audience.

People often ask me why I write these pieces and take the flak they produce, some of it personal and borderline violent. It may be a form of insanity but I can’t sit quiet and watch a birthright, a phenomenon that I have passionately enjoyed since the early ‘50s, be profaned by leaders too shortsighted to see how they and their views are perceived in a world of rapidly changing values. I work in a field where I see and feel those changes every day and have to deal with them at a practical level, trying to navigate the shoals for people whose businesses and livelihoods hang in the balance. It’s a real tsunami of change out there today that has to do with the way people view reality. It is a matter of sociology and group psychology, not waterfowl management or science.

When our skies and our marsh become as quiet as the beekeepers’ hives, and/or the public at large rebels against hunting in general, it will be too late to save any vestige of what we will have lost. On that day, I won’t grieve for my own loss – for I have seen and enjoyed skies that no younger person can even imagine. No. I will grieve for the passing of a better day, for a pastime and phenomenon that made it better – and for my young friends who will have suffered a loss more profound than they will ever realize.

Whether the silence of the bees is a true bellwether, only time will tell. It feels that way to me – and of the things I lack, experience is not one of them.