08/17/07

Good Hunting Season. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed continuation of liberal hunting regulations for the upcoming 2007-2008 late waterfowl seasons thanks to improved habitat conditions and waterfowl population estimates, some at record highs according to Paul Schmidt, the Service's assistant director for migratory birds. SCHMIDT: A very robust population of ducks and geese in the flyways this year 41 million in our count in the breeding grounds for ducks, some are record highs. We have record highs for canvas backs, redhead and northern shovelers. Records, meaning in the past 52 years we've never seen numbers like that when we've been doing this survey." Duck hunting season lengths will be 60 days in both the Atlantic and Mississippi Flyways, 74 days in the Central Flyway, and 107 days in the Pacific Flyway. For a second year concern remains over northern pintails and scaup. The Service is proposing to continue the reduction on the daily bag limit that has been in place the last two years in all flyways and may consider additional restrictions in the future. SCHMIDT: In other cases it's not so good in that we didn't see that kind of an increase in a couple species we're most concerned about that show long term declines, those being northern pintail and scaup. Those species still remain a concern for us and we are going to use regulations appropriately to make sure that we have an appropriate level of harvest on those species. Duck hunting produces $2.2 billion in revenue with much of that going back into conservation of wetlands and resources. Schmidt says the Federal Duck Stamp program alone generates $20 million annually. SCHMIDT: Excise tax on arms and ammunition contribute to state agencies and their professional work on conservation in every state in the union. Over the whole history of the Duck Stamp program dating back to 1934, hundreds of millions of dollars have gone into the contribution to conserve wetland habitats in the United States that is critical to the status and well being of waterfowl. In the Pacific flyway and Alaska the Service and its partners will continue to test migratory birds for Avian Influenza. Last year, more that 100,000 birds were sampled and according to Fish and Wildlife Service Director, Dale Hall nothing was found. HALL: I mean it was really a massive effort and we found no H5N1 High Path confirmation. Now we found several H5N1's that were low path and some N-2's and all of the different ranges of virus's that are there in nature and we will continue to collect samples in the upcoming year as well. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.