The following is an excerpt from the Jan. 3 Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Outdoor Report on waterfowl management and research. For more information or to view the complete report visit www.mefishwildlife.com.
Since the 1985 waterfowl assessment was completed, Maine has switched from a harvest-oriented goal to a breeding population-oriented goal that has resulted in a more responsive program for waterfowl management in Maine. Waterfowl are now being managed to increase certain breeding populations. Low populations of black ducks have caused major changes in regulations since 1983, which have altered traditional hunting seasons.
One method used to increase breeding populations in Maine has been to eliminate, where and when possible, significant forms of non-hunting mortality. Lead poisoning of waterfowl is an example. This problem affects many thousands of birds annually and lead shot use for duck and goose hunting has been banned nationally since 1991.
Maine hunters have been required to use steel shot since 1988, three years ahead of the deadline required by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s national plan. Maine hunters have accepted the facts and shouldered the responsibility for using the latest in shot-shell technology. Many have been pleasantly surprised with their results.
All should be pleased to know that the ban on the use of lead shot for waterfowl hunting saves one to two million waterfowl annually in North America – ducks and geese that a decade ago would have succumbed to lead poisoning – as well as countless predators and scavengers, such as bald eagles, that consume waterfowl and would have been exposed to the effects of secondary lead poisoning.
Habitat protection and enhancement efforts are another form of management that the department is using to increase waterfowl breeding populations. Revenues generated from the sales of state waterfowl hunting stamps and prints have, in addition to supporting waterfowl banding activities, been dedicated to acquisition and development of wetland habitat and coastal nesting islands.
Waterfowl harvests in the United States have declined since 1978, when 15.1 million ducks were recorded in federal harvest surveys. This has been partly by design – as regulations became more restrictive – but it also reflects declining hunter numbers and lower waterfowl populations during the 1980s. The number of Maine’s waterfowl hunters has also declined since 1978, when the high of 18,650 federal migratory bird-hunting stamps were sold. The average number of stamps sold in Maine declined to 10,319 in 2002.
In addition to recent extended season lengths, 1997 marked the first time that states with Sunday hunting prohibitions were allowed additional week days to compensate. The 1998 season in Maine was the most liberal since 1958 with 51 days available to hunters.
A 30-plus year perspective of the waterfowl species composition in the Maine harvest shows that the relative importance of some ducks has changed over this period. Harvests of mallards have increased from fewer than 1,000 birds per year to nearly 15,000 birds in 2001. The common eider is another bird that has increased in the annual Maine waterfowl kill.
An aerial waterfowl population survey is now an operational survey in Maine and the Maritimes in April and May. Further, Maine brood production information is collected on 39 wetlands, and several priority duck and goose banding efforts are conducted each year in the summer and early fall.
These combined inputs help with setting yearly regulations for waterfowl season lengths and daily bag limits to ensure that resources are used at a sustainable level while offering maximum benefit to the hunting and non-hunting communities alike.
Banding is the cornerstone of waterfowl harvest management. Pre-hunting season banding is necessary to provide information on harvest rates, survival rates and source of harvested ducks and geese and for evaluating changes in hunting regulations. The DIF&W is striving to establish a sound waterfowl banding program that will enable us to adequately monitor harvests of ducks and geese produced in Maine. We are working with colleagues in the USFWS and U. S. Geological Survey toward banding sufficient numbers of each species of waterfowl that breed in Maine.
This report was co-written by wildlife biologists R. Bradford Allen and Michael Schummer.
