Scaup ruling hurts federal credibility

The decision Thursday to significantly restrict the scaup (bluebill) harvest by Mississippi Flyway duck hunters this fall emboldens still further critics who claim U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) waterfowl mangers are too far removed from reality to be credible.

If the decision by the service's waterfowl regulations committee stands, Minnesotans will have only a 20-day period during a 60-day duck season this fall in which two scaup can be killed daily.

One bird will be allowed in the season's remaining 40 days. (Meanwhile, the canvasback season will be closed.)

At issue is a scaup population whose numbers have declined in recent decades, to about 3.7 million birds this spring. Still, scaup remain the third most abundant duck on the continent.

No one alleges hunting has caused the decline, or even contributed to it. And everyone agrees that counting these birds in spring is challenging. Ditto analyzing harvest data -- assuming the validity of that data in the first place.

In this noisy information environment, Minnesota and the 13 other states in the Mississippi Flyway argued that their hunters should be allowed two scaup daily, as they were last year.

Their reasoning:

• Hunting has not been tied to the bird's decline.

• Scaup are often confused with ring-necked ducks, whose limit in Minnesota will probably be six this fall -- increasing the chance many hunters will unintentionally violate the one-bird daily scaup limit by shooting scaup they think are ringnecks.

• Scaup hunters are specialists who might give up waterfowling if they are so restricted, particularly in light of the service's suggestion that the limit will stand for two more seasons.

The service has countered that its computer models indicate the scaup harvest should be reduced, given the smaller size of its population. Whether the population model used to arrive at this belief is valid is difficult to assess. Many state biologists say it isn't. The service -- which employs a few hotshot waterfowl scientists of its own --disagrees.

What is beyond dispute is that the Mississippi Flyway -- which accounts for about half the scaup harvest among the four U.S. flyways -- got shafted Thursday in Washington.

The facts:

• The service said it wanted to restrict the Mississippi Flyway scaup harvest to 83,000 birds this fall.

• Agreeing to that benchmark at least in spirit, the Mississippi Flyway argued instead it should be allowed 110,000 scaup (a number achieved by continuing to allow a two-scaup daily bag). The flyway's proposal was 33 percent over the 83,000 the service wanted.

• That excess was the smallest suggested by the four flyways. The Central proposed a harvest 72 percent larger than the service advised, while the Pacific and Atlantic argued for 75 and 86 percent in excess, respectively.

Minnesota waterfowl managers believed the Mississippi Flyway harvest overage they suggested would do no harm to scaup, should the slight harvest increase actually occur. Continental duck populations can't be managed in such relatively minute increments, they argued, and in any event the downside potential of the one-bird limit in terms of harm to hunters and hunting exceeded any possible upside.

The service stuck with the hybrid season it proposed for the Mississippi Flyway: two scaup for 20 days, one for 40 days. Meanwhile, it let stand the original scaup harvest proposals by the Atlantic, Pacific and Central flyways.

Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Mark Holsten and his Mississippi Flyway counterparts should appeal the decision immediately, and in the strongest terms.

Ironically, the service's past duck management decisions have befuddled conservation-minded waterfowlers because the "paper ducks" the service said would show up in fall never did -- except on computer screens in Washington, D.C.

Now those same waterfowlers are again perplexed.

Is it a bluebill? A ringneck?