US Fish & Wildlife Service
Date of this Version
2008
Citation
December 2-4, 2008, Buda Texas
Abstract
For several years, Flyway Technical Committees and Councils have expressed some concern over the direction of the waterfowl harvest regulation setting process. Many of the issues that have been raised are fundamentally of a policy nature. The intent of the first session was to provide an opportunity for the state Flyway representatives to summarize the perspectives of their Flyways with respect to current approaches to regulations setting. The Working Group would then explore common themes among the Flyway comments. Being privy in advance to some of the concerns raised by the Flyways, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) Division of Migratory Bird Management (DMBM) and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Biological Resources Discipline (BRD) personnel coordinating the Working Group meeting attempted to identify overarching issues related to known Flyway concerns and established agenda topics in session 2 and 3 that were designed to address these. It was hoped by working through these overarching issues and describing a set of technical tools to assist in evaluating implications and assessing tradeoffs that the Working Group could then develop and lead a systematic effort to assist policy makers in addressing outstanding policy concerns identified by the Flyways.