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Waterfowl Community Mourns Loss of FWS Biologists |
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Tuesday, January 19, 2010 |
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U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service pilot biologist Ray Bentley, 52, and his observer David Pitkin, 49, were killed when their plane crashed into a forested area near Philomath, Oregon, on January 17. The two were participating in the annual midwinter waterfowl surveys when the accident occurred. Benton County sheriff's deputies say they found the wreckage of the Cessna after it failed to arrive in Corvallis, Oregon.
Bentley was a veteran of aerial waterfowl surveys, having flown the May waterfowl breeding ground surveys in the western Dakotas and eastern Montana for eight years. Pitkin was a former FWS employee who was working the midwinter survey on contract with the Service. No information is currently available on the cause of the crash.
View Ray Bentley's flight logs and photos
USFWS News Release |
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 A new tool is now available to help you better identify ducks. Originally designed to help train volunteers and field staff, this tool also should be very helpful for hunters, bird watchers and wildlife enthusiasts. It contains written descriptions, photos, video clips, and range maps of North American ducks.
View Duck ID |
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Using the Bands Across America search tools found on this site, you can query and map duck band data all the way back to 1914.
Your search of more than 3.1 million banding records can be narrowed or expanded using multiple criteria to easily see banding and recovery locations. The dynamic search interface allows you to:
- Search for banding or recovery locations within a specific state, province, or flyway
- See results for all years that data have been collected or select a single year
- Select the species you’re interested in from a categorized listing
All results are plotted on a scalable map, offering critical information for waterfowl biologists monitoring populations across the continent.
Search the Map |
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Videos Provide Insight into Adaptive Harvest Management |
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Adaptive Harvest Management (AHM) is the annual process of setting duck-hunting regulations in the United States. See this process described in short video clips by two of the scientists that have been instrumental in its development and implementation. View AHM Videos |
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Harvest Data and Reporting Features |
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 The latest Migratory Bird Hunting Activity and Harvest Report has been released, reporting that over 13.7 million ducks were harvested in the United States during the 2008-2009 waterfowl hunting season, down from 14.6 million from the previous season. The number of harvested geese however, increased by 120,000 from the 2007-2008 season, with a total of 3.8 million harvested nationally in 2008-2009.
In addition to downloading the report, you can also generate a custom harvest trends report to view the information that is important to you quickly and easily. The reporting tool has been expanded to provide you with more options for narrowing or expanding the scope of your results. Now, in addition to viewing harvest trends for a specific species in a specific state you can view results for all ducks or all geese on a national level or within a selected flyway, or a total of all ducks and geese at the national level. As before, results are presented in line graph format to easily illustrate harvest trends from 1961 through 2008.
Download Harvest Report
Run a Custom Harvest Trends Report |
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2009 Duck Numbers and Habitat Survey Available |
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Preliminary results for the 2009 Waterfowl Breeding Population and Habitat Survey are now available. The estimate of 42.0 million birds represents a 13% increase over last year’s estimate, and was 25% above the long-term average. The total pond estimate was 6.4 million, which was 45% above last year’s estimate and 31% above the long-term average. Note: Estimates sometimes change between the preliminary numbers and final results.
Read News Release
View Pond Numbers
View Duck Numbers
Download Trends Report |
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Download Snow Goose Hunting Brochure |
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 The explosion of light goose populations in North America poses a grave ecological risk to highly sensitive habitats on Arctic breeding grounds, staging areas, and wintering areas. Recently, greater snow geese, found predominantly in the Atlantic Flyway, have increased dramatically, currently numbering over 1.4 million on the spring staging grounds of southern Quebec and northern New England and New York. In order to reduce the population to a level more in concert with what the habitat can sustain, managers are hoping to stimulate interest and success in snow goose hunting. Towards that end, this brochure provides information on successful tactics, unsuccessful tactics, and tasty snow goose recipes.
Download Brochure |
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