Hi Folks,
CBC are always fun for many reasons. It tickles the grey cells to
think about population trends and regulatory factors. I shared a fun
discussion about the impact of hunting on waterfowl on the south end and
the rest of Cayuga Lake and we discussed if there were objective data on
population abundance to justify preventing such hunting. This got me
thinking.
The Fish and Wildlife spends an immense amount of effort to census
waterfowl every year: extensive aerial surveys that criss-cross the
prairie potholes and elsewhere and Hudson Bay coast, really extensive
banding efforts, and hundreds of hours of ground surveys, etc. All of
this provides an estimate of pop abundance for each species. This is
used to set bag limits. This immense effort is predicated on the belief
that hunters are one of the significant factors that regulate waterfowl
abundance, and that to sustain the population at nearly level numbers
over the long term, one must adjust the bag limit in some proportion to
the abundance at the start of fall migration. In the same line of
reasoning, the spring snow goose hunting season and the split canada
goose hunting season are all based on the belief that hunting in general
regulates waterfowl abundance. The newly proposed expansion of waterfowl
hunting on snow geese for Montezuma is also based on hunting will
continue to regulate abundance. Either, hunting does regulate waterfowl
abundance, or the F&WS is fooling us and themselves.
It is impossible to acquire the specific, statistically-based
evidence that hunting regulates the specific population of waterfowl
using Cayuga Lake for several reasons. There is no reason to believe
that the impact of hunting of waterfowl on Cayuga Lake is exempt from
this generality. In fact, it would be incumbent for the merit of such an
argument to provide evidence why Cayuga Lake is an exception to the
general concept of waterfowl management.
Difficulties in making data-based arguments about waterfowl on
Cayuga Lake include many factors.
1) There is no estimate of the take, which obviously means you can't
quantify the impact. The absence of the fundamental data limits the
ability to say if there is or isn't an effect.
2)There is no way to estimate the impact of driving the waterfowl out of
their favored foraging site. A reasonable hypothesis is that winter food
supply is important. Waterfowl speak with their wings. This provides
strong support for the hypothesis that the shallows of Cayuga Lake
provide a favorable foraging site. There are no other areas in the
inland northeast that have as many diving ducks in mid-winter as Seneca
and Cayuga Lakes. The abundance of diving waterfowl on these lakes
during times outside of the hunting season suggest that this food source
may be one of the best in the entire winter range. In which case,
limiting access to a food source for part of the winter may be very
deleterious, and could have negative effects on far more than the number
killed by shot.
3) When I first came here, there was a waterfowl bander on Seneca Lake.
I never met him and don't recall his name. I was told, with what seemed
like high credibility, that banding indicated that waterfowl moved back
and forth between Seneca Lake, and by inference Cayuga Lake as well, and
the coast repeatedly during the winter. Thus, populations on Seneca
Lake, and by inference Cayuga Lake, are a sub-sample of the eastern
population. The suggestion that an increase in waterfowl on Cayuga Lake
during the winter shows that hunting on Cayuga Lake has no impact on the
Cayuga Lake population fails to consider that the Cayuga Lake population
is a portion of and exchanges with the east coast wintering population.
In order to detect an effect of Cayuga Lake take, it would have to be
large enough to impact a perceptible portion of the entire eastern
wintering population.
4) Reliable data on the impact of hunting on diving ducks on part of
Cayuga Lake can not be based on data documenting an effect of hunting,
because there is no such data. Further, it would be nigh impossible to
obtain. Such data would require a series of years with and without
hunting seasons, including years when the continental populations are
high and are low. It would require a level of precision on the take of
the population and quantitative information on the exchange with the
larger coastal population. It does not seem feasible to me to obtain
such a data-based decision on the impact that hunting on Cayuga Lake has
on the east coast population of diving ducks.
I believe such a ban can be defended on general arguments. The
decision to create federal wildlife refuges is based on the argument
that waterfowl need some place to forage and loaf where they are free of
hunting pressure. J. "Ding" Darling, with Ithaca relations, helped
popularize this perception. The refuge system was proposed as a means to
sustain a high population for hunters for the long run. For diving
ducks, Cayuga Lake has no refuge because during the hunting season ponds
are frozen and the ducks are chased up and down the entire shore, the
only available habitat. While some shorelines do not allow hunting
access, hunting and fishing from boats eliminates these sites as loafing
areas. The great majority of the diving ducks who would use this lake if
they were not hunted, are either killed or driven out during the hunting
season. (Dabblers, who in the largest part migrate south of here when
the shallow waters freeze, are affected by a different mixture of
factors.) It is compatible with the basic reason for the refuge system
to presume, until shown otherwise, that the loss of a highly favorable
foraging and loafing site is highly likely to have a negative impact on
the population. In the long run, this is deleterious to hunters.
An entirely different argument is based on the relative involvement
for non-consumptive watching and hunting. Hunting diving ducks on Cayuga
Lake is obviously deleterious to birders and there are far more birders
than hunters. In New York, 3,800,000 people participated in wildlife
watching in 2006 and spent $1.5 billion, while 568,000 people
participated in hunting for waterfowl and upland game in NY spending
$715 million. More locally, at MNWR the current annual use is
approximately124,924 visitor-days by those who participated in wildlife
watching, photography and environmental education and2252 visitor-days
for individuals who hunt for upland game and waterfowl.I support
hunting: the deer population should be greatly reduced and hunting seems
to be the optimum method, and, e.g., canada geese and snow geese should
be greatly reduced. Shooting diving ducks on all parts of Cayuga Lake is
not in the same category to me. First, I don't think that a few
individuals should greatly reduce the pleasure of many. Second, the
initial popular movement and reasoning for the creation of the refuge
system were predicated on the hypothesis that preserving favorable sites
for foraging and for loafing are essential to maintaining future
populations that are abundant enough to allow hunting success. I believe
that argument is valid and support its philosophy. Some portions of the
Cayuga Lake shoreline, which are attractive to diving ducks, should be
exempt from hunting.Cheers, John Confer -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
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