The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced today that it is reopening the public comment period on its proposed duck-hunting regulatory alternatives for the upcoming 2002-2003 season. An announcement of the reopened comment period, which will extend to June 21st, was published in the June 11, 2002, Federal Register.
The regulatory alternatives represent four levels of hunting opportunity - very restrictive, restrictive, moderate, and liberal - one of which is chosen each year depending on the status of duck populations and their habitats.
The extension is designed to allow the public additional time to comment on the proposed alternatives, in light of new assessments concerning the level at which hunting opportunities can be offered without adverse impacts on duck populations. These changes may ultimately have an impact on season lengths and bag limits approved for future migratory bird hunting seasons.
"Hunters need to be aware of changes in the way the Service estimates the effect of harvest on duck populations, and recent recommendations from the flyway councils on how to respond to changes in waterfowl abundance. The additional comment period will give the public time to examine these issues and give us valuable feedback," said Tom Melius, Assistant Director for Migratory Birds and State Programs.
Annual monitoring programs, including population, habitat, and harvest surveys, help guide the Services waterfowl conservation programs under authority of the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act. The Service works in partnership with State representatives from the four flyways - the Atlantic, Mississippi, Central and Pacific - that waterfowl and other birds use during their migrations, to establish hunting season lengths, dates and bag limits.
In an effort to deal effectively with the uncertainty about effects of regulated hunting on waterfowl populations, the Service instituted a process called adaptive harvest management (AHM) in 1995. The AHM process recognizes that understanding of waterfowl populations and of the effects of harvest are incomplete, and provides a framework for making objective decisions in the face of that uncertainty. The AHM process also relies on a repeating sequence of regulation planning, implementation, and evaluation to help increase knowledge so that future regulatory decisions can be improved.
A working group, composed of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and state wildlife agency employees tasked with the technical development of AHM, recently reviewed elements of the process that have been in place since 1995. The working group concluded that in general, the AHM process has been a significant improvement over past efforts to manage the sport harvest of waterfowl. However, the group also recommended some changes after discovering that survival and/or reproductive rates of ducks may have been over-estimated due to problems with monitoring programs.
Record waterfowl populations and good habitat conditions have enabled the Service to approve liberal waterfowl hunting frameworks for the past five seasons. Correction for the estimation error does not suggest that regulations should have been different during the last five seasons, but does suggest that hunting regulations may need to be more restrictive in the future, particularly as duck populations experience periodic declines due to drought on the breeding grounds.
The flyway councils also have offered a number of recommendations to the Service on how to modify the set of regulatory alternatives. For instance, several councils have recommended that annual changes in the regulations be limited to one step up or down among the regulatory alternatives (such as from liberal to moderate, rather than from liberal to restrictive), in order to reduce the chance that season lengths and bag limits would fluctuate dramatically from year to year. Another recommendation involves changing the criteria for closing hunting seasons in the case of declining duck populations.
At the same time, the Service is attempting to settle a long-running dispute over late-season framework extensions. The dispute centers on the desire of some southern states to extend their seasons into late January, believing that a later date offers more opportunities for their hunters. For the past three years, Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee have been allowed to extend their seasons to January 31, with a corresponding reduction in the total number of days the season is allowed to be open, from 60 days to 51.
Last summer, the flyway councils submitted a proposal through the National Flyway Council that would give all states a framework opening date of the Saturday nearest September 24 and a closing date of the last Sunday in January, with no penalties in days or bag limits, if duck population and habitat conditions warrant selection of "moderate" or "liberal" harvest alternatives. The Service proposed to implement this change in October 2001, but ultimately withdrew its proposal after concluding that more discussion was warranted. After meeting with a working group representing a cross-section of all flyway councils and states over the past winter, the Service proposed to implement the framework extensions in its March publication of preliminary migratory bird hunting regulations.
"Any of these changes in themselves would represent a significant change in how we manage waterfowl populations. The fact that they are all under consideration at once represents a major challenge for the Service," said Melius. "We remain committed to maintaining and expanding waterfowl hunting opportunities, consistent with maintaining healthy waterfowl populations for future generations."
Comments will be accepted until June 21. They may be sent to the Chief, Division of Migratory Bird Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Department of the Interior, ms 634-ARLSQ, 1849 C St., NW, Washington, DC 20240.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is the principal Federal agency responsible for conserving, protecting and enhancing fish, wildlife and plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people. The Service manages the 95-million-acre National Wildlife Refuge System which encompasses nearly 540 national wildlife refuges, thousands of small wetlands and other special management areas. It also operates 70 national fish hatcheries, 64 fishery resource offices and 78 ecological services field stations. The agency enforces Federal wildlife laws, administers the Endangered Species Act, manages migratory bird populations, restores nationally significant fisheries, conserves and restores wildlife habitat such as wetlands, and helps foreign governments with their conservation efforts. It also oversees the Federal Aid program that distributes hundreds of millions of dollars in excise taxes on fishing and hunting equipment to state fish and wildlife agencies.
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