By Mark Hennelly, Vice President for Advocacy 

(Originally published in Winter 2024 issue of California Waterfowl)

When the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) released the 2024 Waterfowl Population Status Report in August, it became clear that, based upon the new interim pintail harvest strategy, hunters in California and across the United States would at last have an opportunity to harvest three pintail per day beginning with the 2025-26 season. This was the culmination of many years of advocacy by CWA and other critical efforts by our state, federal and nongovernmental partners.

The bag limit for pintail hasn’t been this high since 1997 (and even for 10 years prior to that, it was just one or two birds per day). Moreover, during the last several seasons, the daily bag has been limited to only one bird, which — more than any other state — especially impacts hunting opportunity in California, where about 60% of the entire continental pintail population winters annually.

For so long, CWA has been communicating California hunters’ frustration with conservative pintail limits to federal and state decision-makers, while arguing for a 3-bird (or higher) bag limit based on the latest science and the preferences of the majority of our membership. This has included countless meetings, phone calls, emails and other traditional advocacy efforts. We’ve even taken decisionmakers out hunting in California so they can experience for themselves the impressive flights of pintails we enjoy here.

As early as 2016, we published an article in our magazine by Dr. Ben Sedinger explaining why bag limits have little, if any, impact on duck populations, especially pintail whose survival rates have remained largely unchanged for the last 40 years. In 2017, we also convened a Pintail Summit in Sacramento that brought scientists from throughout North America who have studied pintail and harvest management to discuss what additional data gathering, modeling analysis and other work needed to be done. It should also be noted that CWA and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (DFW) banded tens of thousands of pintail immediately before and after the hunting season since at least 2006 to facilitate data gathering to support our efforts. To achieve the 3-bird bag, it was critical for CWA to work cooperatively with the USFWS, the Pacific Flyway Council and especially the DFW. In particular, without the DFW’s willingness to keep this effort on track through its active participation on the Pacific Flyway Council, a 3-bird bag option would likely have never made it through the entire waterfowl regulatory process.

In 2018, our efforts picked up steam. In response to a request by CWA, a Pacific Flyway Council Pintail Working Group was formed in January with the support of the DFW. The USFWS then formed a National Pintail Harvest Strategy Working Group in November, which included representatives of the USFWS and the four Flyway Councils.

In early 2018, CWA also formally requested via a detailed letter that the Pacific Flyway Council help develop a new harvest strategy that included a 3-bird-per-day option. In that letter, we noted the following:

• “California’s midwinter index of pintail is approximately 1 million birds, representing a substantial share of the entire continental population. Waterfowl surveys conducted throughout the hunting season, including those in the Central Valley and Klamath Basin, often show that a plurality (in some cases a majority) of all ducks surveyed are pintail.”
• “We strongly agree that the needs and preferences of hunters must be considered in the waterfowl regulatory process, and that greater hunter opportunity will aid in recruitment, retention and reactivation efforts.”
• “It appears that the last 20 years of restrictive regulations on pintail have not resulted in a significant boost in their populations, even in years of good precipitation in the prairies. Changing farming practices, especially in wheat fields favored by nesting pintail, may be the driving factor in limiting pintail populations (as opposed to harvest). The number of days in the waterfowl season has a far greater impact on total harvest than do bag limits.”
• “A 2017 study of harvest and the effects on the pintail population by Bartzen and Dufour entitled ‘Northern Pintail (Anas acuta) survival, recovery, and harvest rates derived from 55 years of banding in Prairie Canada, 1960-2014)’ found that ‘there was no clear evidence that hunting bag limit restrictions affected annual survival, recovery, or harvest rates. In addition, we could find no compelling evidence that harvest mortality was substantially additive to nonharvest mortality for pintails … we suggest that a trial basis of liberalized hunting bag limits would do much to improve the understanding of harvest and population dynamics of pintails and pose little risk to the population.’”

In response to our letter, the Pacific Flyway Council agreed to initiate the long, arduous process of revising the 2010 pintail harvest management strategy. The goals of the revision would include reevaluating the goals of pintail harvest management, evaluating current and other regulatory alternatives (such as 3-bird bag scenarios) and incorporating new scientific data (such as the effects of harvest on pintail).

The USFWS also subsequently elevated the pintail harvest management strategy revision to a high priority, which we had urged it to do. However, due in part to other competing priorities, limited staff resources, government shutdowns, COVID-19 and other factors, progress was painfully slow. And for a time, many of our members rightly pointed out the delays and missed deadlines. In an effort to speed things up, CWA even urged several members of our California Congressional delegation to send a letter to the USFWS asking it to expedite the process, which they thankfully did.

In the meantime, each year CWA would continue its advocacy efforts on behalf of the 3-pintail bag limit option, which included annual trips to Washington, D.C., meetings with top USFWS personnel, participation in Flyway Council meetings and invitations to the federal Migratory Bird Program staff to provide regulatory process updates and answer questions at CWA’s Regulations and Traditions Committee meetings. Of note, CWA coordinated many of its lobbying efforts with Delta Waterfowl, which also strongly supported a liberalization of pintail regulations.

Fast forward to March of 2024. A draft interim harvest strategy for pintail was finally ready for the four Flyway Councils to vote on that included a 3-bird bag limit option for an entire season if the annual pintail breeding population survey reached a certain, reasonable threshold. While there was significant support within the USFWS and many of the states for this proposal, the Mississippi Flyway Council wanted certain conditions put on it that were not supported by the other three Flyway Councils. This threatened to further delay or even derail the entire effort, since the Service Regulations Committee, which must approve harvest strategy revisions and other regulatory changes, has historically sought unanimous support from all four Flyway Councils.

CWA made it known that we also opposed the Mississippi Flyway Council’s conditions. Fortunately, the Service Regulations Committee ultimately approved the new interim harvest strategy, as originally proposed by the National Pintail Harvest Strategy Working Group and largely consistent with the Bartzen and Dufour study’s recommendations that CWA cited in its original 2018 letter to the Pacific Flyway Council.

Under the interim strategy, once three seasons of a 3-pintail bag are selected (which could take 3-10 years or more depending on pintail breeding counts), the USFWS will then assess what impact, if any, it had on pintail populations. Depending on that analysis, the interim strategy could then be made a longer-term, operational harvest strategy (thereby keeping the 3-bird option), or it could revert back to the previous 2010 strategy (which does not include a 3-bird option for the Pacific Flyway). Or, the interim strategy could also be modified to reflect any new information gained. 

So, in a sense, the pintail bag limit saga continues. Under the current USFWS policy of adaptive harvest management for waterfowl, all harvest strategies are periodically updated to take into consideration new data and science, so no regulations are ever set in stone. But California hunters can rest assured that they will enjoy at least three seasons of a 3-pintail bag in the coming years. For that, there is reason to finally celebrate.