WWG_Sept08_MeetingNotes.doc

To: LMVJV Waterfowl Working Group

From: John Tirpak

Date: 1 October 2008

Re: Waterfowl Working Group meeting summary – 10-11 September 2008

10 September 2008 – Turner Neal Hunt Club, Dumas, AR

Rich Johnson started off with a short welcome and covered some basic logistics

Next the group went around the room to introduce themselves (Attendee list – Table 1)

Bill Uihlein followed with a presentation (available on the website) covering 3 topics:

  1. Allocation in the context of the LMVJV
  2. LMVJV in the context of the NAWMP
  3. NAWMP in the context of waterfowl management

John Tirpak followed with a presentation (available on the website) outlining:

  1. The need and benefit of transparency, defensibility, and replicability in establishing, allocating, and apportioning population and foraging habitat objectives
  2. Transparency promotes clear expectations, a common understanding, and adaptive learning
  3. Defensibility increases credibility and accountability
  4. Replicability improves consistency among iterations (new people or new information)
  5. Demonstration of how transparency, defensibility, and replicability exist in establishment of overall JV population and habitat objectives and how this facilitates incorporation of new information into these processes
  6. Demonstration of how transparency, defensibility, and replicability do not exist in habitat-level allocation or state-level apportionment processes and how this hampers our ability to revise them.

Uihlein opened the floor to the group to identify concerns, issues, and assumptions associated with the allocation process. Discussion by the group revolved around two main topics

  1. Issues and concerns with habitat sources
  2. Naturally flooded lands
  3. Private managed lands
  4. Public managed lands
  5. The allocation process itself
  6. Do we need to allocate to habitat types (cropland, moist soil unit, bottomland forest) as well as habitat sources?
  7. Role of sanctuary?
  8. Where do we start: natural or managed systems?

Ken Reinecke viewed the allocation process as:

  1. An ill-conditioned problem – one that can’t be tackled directly
  2. A bounded problem – there are identifiable limits on the amount of foraging habitat that will be allocated to each habitat source. These limits can be defined by:
  3. Biological constraints
  4. Organizational purpose
  5. Socio-economic desires/realities
  6. A problem characterized by undesirable and unintended consequences at its extremes
  7. If natural flood has no value, what justification is there for it?
  8. Is there a point where we can increase public land management so much that we negatively influence private land management?

After a break, Uihlein walked group through Draft Decision Rules to further elucidate the concerns, issues, and assumptions associated with the allocation process

  1. General agreement with decision rules 1 and 2. Numerous edits suggested to specific wording.
  2. Rule 3 concerning naturally flooded lands led to some consternation
  3. Areas of agreement
  4. Naturally flooded lands should always be considered first; however, this does not mean there will be any foraging habitat objectives allocated to natural flooded habitats
  5. Due to concerns about depth, duration, frequency, and quality, we must be conservative in our reliance on naturally flooded lands
  6. Initial decision to allocate DED value exceeded in 4 of 5 winters in DU’s Waterfowl Habitat Monitoring Program analysis
  7. Areas of extended discussion
  8. Use of a structured decision rule process (decision rules) vs. best professional judgment and intuition for allocation
  9. Challenges of a step-wise decision rule approach while maintaining a holistic perspective on the system
  10. Concern over use of existing or desired levels of habitat provided through managed lands to inform allocation to naturally flooded lands
  11. Potential consequences of over- or under-allocating objectives within each source
  12. Considerable time spent wrestling with these issues.
  13. Rules 4 and 5
  14. Immediately before breaking for dinner, group decided to pursue one iteration of decision rule process and evaluate results after dinner:
  15. Rule 4 (public managed lands)
  16. Initial allocation to capability adjusted for performance
  17. Revised allocation to address any surpluses or deficits
  18. This decision made without adequate justification
  19. Rule 5 (private managed lands)
  20. Use DED value exceeded in 4 of 5 winters
  21. This decision made without adequate justification
  22. Values run during dinner for MS, smaller group reconvened after dinner and concluded:
  23. Performance values on public managed lands needs to be adjusted
  24. Values initially calculated erroneous due to disagreement between 2005 performance and 2007 capability estimates
  25. Randy Wilson indicatedperformance on public managed landsaveraged80% across the MAV
  26. Data available in HPA
  27. Does this value need refinement?
  28. How can this value be constant if realized DED values change?
  29. State-specific values needed?
  30. Concern over suggested reduction in DEDs on public managed land if surplus exists
  31. Do we need to consider other birds (e.g., shorebirds)?
  32. Is this the charge of the WWG?
  33. States/Feds may not care if exceeding DED allocation
  34. Does overachievement in some states have negative consequences for others?
  35. Distribution
  36. Mortality
  37. Do we need to worry about excess DEDs, as long as birds are being taken care of? Is the allocation a minimum standard?

Dale James finished the night by presenting some initial estimates of the potentially large role WRP and private duck clubs can play in providing waterfowl foraging habitat

  1. Some concerns over the specific DED values used
  2. Were WRP sites subsampled and visited? (MSU currently conducting research using this protocol).
  3. Sanctuary considerations of duck clubs? DU is interested in developing more formal survey techniques to reduce the uncertainties about private managed lands

11 September 2008 – Turner Neal Hunt Club, Dumas, AR

Reconvene in the morning with Bill Uihlein facilitating

Uihlein pointed out progress made on day 1 identifying issues and concerns around naturally flooded lands. He suggested group work through this process for public and private managed lands.

Tirpak provided a list of issues and concerns he capturedon day 1 for all habitat sources. Group spent time refining and added to this list (Full list – Table 2).

The group agreed:

  1. These uncertainties needed to be explicitly incorporated into the allocation process.
  2. A “bounded box” strategy would be the best approach to allocation to explicitly account for uncertainty and variability within foraging habitat sources (Figure 1).
  3. Waterfowl biologists from each state would host a meeting with the relevant waterfowl habitat stakeholders within each state (e.g., national wildlife refuge managers, DU, USGS, etc.) to specifically determine the range of values within which each habitat source would be relied on to provide foraging habitat objectives. These ranges of values will define the space within which management is trying to maintain waterfowl habitat within the MAV. Assumptions associated with the establishment of these values must be documented to achieve a transparent, defensible, and replicable process.

Following allocation discussions, Tirpak provided a quick overview of the NAWMP Assessment and its call for an increased focus on a clear accountability framework. Tirpak encouraged group to review the following documents (all available on the website) as evidence of this commitment to increased accountability:

  1. 27 recommendations from NAWMP assessment
  2. Triennial assessments – the LMVJV needs to provide a progress report to the Plan Committee in 2010
  3. Letter from Assessment Committee outlining LMVJV-specific recommendations
  4. NAWMP Science Support Team documents

Luke Naylor then briefed group on the Future of Waterfowl Management Workshop and its call to find coherence among the habitat, harvest, and human dimensions aspects of waterfowl management. The Joint Task Group report and presentations from the Workshop are available on the LMVJV website.

Naylor then provided a briefing on the status of the Mallard Satellite Telemetry Project proposal. The group supported the project and agreed that the existing habitat information maintained by the partnership as well as the process and procedures developed for the Waterfowl Habitat Monitoring Program developed by Ducks Unlimited could be informative to the ambitious objectives of the project. The group also agreed that we should look for opportunities to support this flyway-wide endeavor (e.g., formally becoming involved in the international Migration Observation Network).

Nominations were sought for a new chair. Naylor was nominated and approved unanimously. Tirpak will provide significant support to Naylor in guiding this group.

A location will be sought by Tirpak and Naylor for next WWG meeting in early January. All suggestions and offers of assistance will be welcomed.

Adjourn

ACTION ITEMS IDENTIFIED:

  1. By 1 October 2008, Tirpak will provide each state with:
  2. Meeting notes
  3. List of issues and concerns associated with each habitat source
  4. Tables depicting DEDs provided by each habitat type for each time period analyzed as part of the Waterfowl Habitat Monitoring Program. This will include current allocation decisions and habitat objectives.
  5. Revised bar graphs depicting DEDs provided by each habitat type for each time period analyzed as part of the Waterfowl Habitat Monitoring Program
  6. WWG Report from June 2007
  1. By 1 December 2008, each state biologist will:
  2. Host a meeting with the relevant waterfowl habitat stakeholders within each state (e.g., national wildlife refuge managers, DU, USGS, etc.) to specifically determine the range of values within which each habitat source would be relied on to provide foraging habitat objectives within the context of the other sources (i.e., holistically). These ranges of values will define the space within which management is trying to maintain waterfowl habitat within the MAV. It is important to note that these meetings are not intended to be allocation meetings, but instead should focus on defining the boundaries within which an allocation process can be developed.
  3. Provide Tirpak:
  4. List of attendees at state meeting
  5. Range of values representing the upper and lower bounds for each habitat source identified by state meeting participants
  6. List of explicit assumptions associated with these bounds
  7. Tirpak will provide a framework for identifying these assumptions to promote a transparent and defensible process
  1. Early January: WWG will reconvene
  2. Tirpak will compile information from state-level meetings and report to WWG
  3. WWG will be given opportunity to comment on any decisions and then will proceed on developing a formal allocation process
  4. A request was made by Naylor to the group to participate in coordinated monitoring of waterfowl abundance throughout the winter in the MAV. Specific protocols and a crafted letter were requested by group before committing.

Table 1. Attendees of Lower Mississippi Valley Joint Venture Waterfowl Working Group meeting, Turner Neal Hunt Club, Dumas, AR, September 10-11, 2008.
Name / Organization / 9/10 / 9/11
Jon Andrew / U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Refuges / X
Randy Cook / U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Refuges / X / X
Tom Edwards / U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service – Migratory Birds / X / X
Blaine Elliott / LowerMississippiValley Joint Venture Office (USFWS) / X / X
Janet Ertel / U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Refuges / X / X
Dan Fuqua / Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency / X / X
Houston Havens / Mississippi Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks / X
Dale James / Ducks Unlimited / X / X
Clint Jeske / USGS - NWRC / X / X
Rich Johnson / Arkansas Game and Fish Commission / X / X
Luke Naylor / Arkansas Game and Fish Commission / X / X
Frank Nelson / Missouri Department of Conservation / X / X
Ed Penny / Mississippi Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks / X
Steve Reagan / U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Refuges / X / X
Ken Reinecke / USGS - PWRC / X
Fred Roetker / U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Refuges / X / X
John Tirpak / LowerMississippiValley Joint Venture Office (USFWS) / X / X
Bill Uihlein / LowerMississippiValley Joint Venture Office (USFWS) / X / X
David Viker / U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Migratory Birds / X
Randy Wilson / U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Migratory Birds / X / X
Table 2. Issues and concerns with individual habitat sources identified by Lower Mississippi Valley Joint Venture, Waterfowl Working Group, Turner Neal Hunt Club, Dumas, AR, September 10-11, 2008.
Source
Issuea
Naturally flooded lands
Frequency (reliability)
Depth
Duration
Habitat quality (DED value)
Scale (spatial extent)
Private managed lands
Reliability between years (short-term)
State change over time (long-term)
Sanctuary
Habitat quality (DED value)
Accountability
Public managed lands
Capability vs. performance
Sanctuary
Habitat quality (DED value)

a Individual issues are detailed in “WWG_AllocationIssues.doc”.


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