Oct/Nov 08

Waterfowling North America
Waterfowl Survey Mixed
Ducks are down, fuel is up.
by Doug Larsen

ach year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in conjunction with state agencies, conducts the Waterfowl Breeding Population and Habitat Survey, generally known as the breeding survey and/or the “pond counts.” While it may sound rather simplistic, it’s the most extensive waterfowl survey in the world, and it samples over 2 million square miles across the north-central U.S. and all across Canada and Alaska.

Despite what you might read on Internet duck-hunting forums, the USFWS study is an exacting one. I think it is important that before we begin, we all know that this is not just two biology students rambling around the prairies in a rusty Suburban, but an all-out duck-counting assault each year conducted by many, many people well-qualified to do so. While this survey is conducted in May and into early June, the results are not usually published until July, and it is the findings of this survey that are processed via the Adaptive Harvest Management model to determine how the duck seasons will be structured for the fall.

There is both good news and bad news. Since I’ve always been someone who likes to get the cauliflower off the plate before I eat my steak, the bad news first. Despite good to great water conditions in eastern Canada and across most of Alberta, it is quite dry in some of the most important parts of the breeding regions of the U.S. and Canada (the Dakotas and Saskatchewan), and the pond counts are down. The USFWS counted 4.4 million ponds, which is 37% lower than in 2007 when they counted 7 million ponds.

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