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A lot has changed since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, but one thing that hasn’t: the need for data to inform waterfowl management and hunting regulations according to officials with Delta Waterfowl.

“Season lengths and bag limits are adjusted annually based on changes in bird abundance and habitat condition. Since 1955, the Waterfowl Breeding Population and Habitat Survey has provided that vital data. Conducted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Canadian Wildlife Service, this annual survey spans more than 2 million square miles of critical waterfowl breeding grounds. It’s the largest and most extensive wildlife survey in the world.”

“The annual evaluation of waterfowl population and habitat in North America has enormous practical importance for waterfowl managers and hunters. However, because of fieldwork limitations related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the full survey wasn’t conducted in 2020 or 2021. In May 2022, the survey was completed for the first time since 2019.”

“It’s great that there will be a survey this year,” said Dr. Frank Rohwer, president and chief scientist of Delta Waterfowl. “This is a cornerstone piece of information that’s used to set harvest regulations.”

A Data Drought

In the absence of newer surveys, hunting regulations have been developed based on the 2019 data and habitat projections for 2020 and 2021. In 2019, the total number of breeding ducks was 38.9 million, 10 percent above the long-term average. Hunting regulation frameworks remain liberal across all four flyways for the 2022-2023 season.

USFWS has relied on mathematical models of population growth and decline to estimate current waterfowl populations. Despite these efforts, the breeding population remains uncertain without an up-to-date survey, especially on the tails of drought in the Prairie Pothole Region.

“We’ve had two lousy production years,” Rohwer said. “Ducks like to settle in the prairies, but when the prairies are dry, they will overfly and go other places. We don’t count them in those other places, so we could have ducks come out of the woodwork and populate the prairies.

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