Scaup issue continues to percolate

An important, three-day waterfowl management conference that attracted some 200 attendees from the United States and Canada was held in Minneapolis this week, intentionally removed from the public eye. Among attendees was Dale Hall, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS).

The conference might in the end represent a turning point for waterfowl management in North America. More about that in future columns.

First, Minnesota duck hunters should know Hall and various USFWS waterfowl managers and biologists met Wednesday with Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Mark Holsten, DNR Fish and Wildlife Division Director Dave Schad and DNR waterfowl specialist Steve Cordts.

At issue was the service's decision July 31 to restrict duck hunters this fall in the 14 states of the Mississippi Flyway to one scaup (bluebill) during 40 of the season's 60 days and to two scaup in the remaining 20 days. The scaup limit last year was two daily, with four in possession.

Holsten wrote a letter to Hall protesting the service's decision shortly after it was issued, as did the Wisconsin DNR. But Hall was out of the country, and Wednesday provided the first opportunity for the subject to be aired.

Holsten told Hall the scaup harvest option Minnesota is proposing -- two scaup daily for 45 days, and one for 15 -- would likely result in a harvest only marginally different (if at all) from one expected by the service's 40/20 hybrid plan.

Hall, a career wildlife manager, is widely considered to be a straight shooter, and one who will listen. He told the Minnesota delegation the comment period on the service's harvest recommendations is open until Sept. 8, and that the Mississippi Flyway Council should submit a formal scaup counterproposal to the service by then.

That didn't happen in part because scaup aren't important birds in hunters' bags in the majority of states in the flyway -- Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Louisiana being the exceptions.

Additionally, many waterfowl managers in the Mississippi Flyway didn't agree with the service's scaup harvest model and didn't want to validate it by assuming its premises to arrive at a harvest proposal.

Most state waterfowl managers instead wanted the service to blink, essentially, and retain the two-birds-daily scaup harvest of a year ago.

Making matters worse, flyway representatives at the regulations committee meeting didn't formally offer (or get the opportunity to offer) their 45/15 split as an option -- giving the service the opening it needed to move its 40/20 split forward.

Upshot: The service's 40/20 scaup harvest split is a mistake. Not only because its underlying harvest model is suspect, and has virtually no buy-in among state waterfowl managers and biologists. But because it didn't seriously weigh the effect of dramatically cutting the scaup limit on waterfowl hunters (of whom there are ever fewer), absent a clear and present risk to the resource .

It's ironic that a central theme of the conference this week was the need to include "human dimensions" in formation of waterfowl management strategies. Broadly speaking, this means including the interests of hunters (and others) in developing harvest (and, ideally, habitat) guidelines and regulations.

Ironic because the humans most affected by the service's scaup harvest proposal -- waterfowlers in Minnesota and a few other states -- feel more left out of the process than ever.