Late Speckle Belly season, comments wanted by ODFW

[Eric Strand]

This message was sent by Brad Bales, ODFW.

For the past 2 years we have been authorized to allow a late season white-fronted goose season in Klamath County. This season and issues with Tule white-fronted goose harvest were heavily debated at recent Flyway meetings. The final frameworks allows for the same late season days and timing but the bag limit has changed to allow only 1 white-fronted goose but 3 white geese can now be added to the daily bag limit. This decision has created quite a debate amongst many hunters and landowners. Below is a copy of a note that I had posted on an internet forum that addresses the background and rationale for this Flyway decision. Please take a look and provide any comments back to me by August 8. Thanks much again.



Thanks for the note. When ODFW went into this hunt it was solely for the purpose of assisting landowners with depredation using hunters as a management tool. Very much like the NW Oregon Permit Goose Season. This truly isn't being managed for a purely sports recreational hunt nor at this point was it meant to be a tool to maximize harvest. But of course once the barn door is open is it hard to get the horse back in

When we started down this road, our flyway partners, especially the states of Alaska, California and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had to evaluate how best to approach this and meet some of the landowner concerns. The Oregon Farm Bureau was very much involved in all our discussions. Farmers were at the time putting more blame on white goose problems and wanted emphasis put on those.

The flyway partners at the time were more concerned about Wrangel Island snow geese as that population was still below population objective and in recent years less of them have been coming to Oregon and California and wintering in the Skagit Valley of Washington. In fact, 70 percent of that population never comes further than Washington state now. That is a major shift. So we decided to offer some hunting on white-fronts in the basin but of course that didn't come without concerns about any further Tule harvest. Yes, greater white-fronts are significantly over flyway population objective but there are still many population dynamics of Tules we don't understand. They are truly are the most rare goose subspecies we have in this flyway and likely in North America. We cannot measure them on the breeding grounds in Alaska , as we do with most goose populations, as they seem to shift from place to place randomly nesting in forested areas. And on the wintering grounds, primarily California, they are so mixed with greater white-fronts to they extent that any kind of comprehensive survey can be quite difficult to impossible. Nobody, especially California, wants another another goose management situation like duskies in the Willamette Valley.

In recent years Alaska, California, Oregon and USFWS have been conducting research trying to better understand population ecology of Tules and try to come up with a reasonable approach to developing a population estimate. The only approach that seemed to have merit is a mark-recapture study using radio collared birds. But catching a good sample of birds proved nearly impossible in California but we have had better success in capturing them in Oregon during fall migration. We are actively pursuing putting on more collars this year and we should have 4 years of good data. However, this methodology has not been scientifically reviewed by outside parties and may or may not be deemed a reliable population estimator. If it is, it will be costly and labor intensive to keep up and will need to be brought into the many current flyway monitoring programs that occur. If it isn't, we are back to square one.

White-front harvest in both California and Oregon has been hampered for decades because of the uncertainty of the population status of Tules. In Oregon, primarily Lake county has seen delays of hunting for up to a month and a reduced bag limit on white-fronts. In recent years, we have had a 2 bird white-front limit in Lake county. You will be able to soon note that federal frameworks will only allow 1 white-front in the harvest. This is a result of increased harvest in the late Klamath hunt. In California, core wintering areas of Tules have seen late goose season openers, closed areas and early season closures to protect Tules. This has severely hampered harvest of greater white-fronts and no doubt contributes to that growing population.

The flyway goal in starting the Klamath hunt was to not see any increase in overall flyway harvest. It was hoped that no Tules would occur in the basin on the Oregon side based on the habitat base we had and the preference for Tules to forage in wetland areas. We know that some Tules have been taken in that hunt, based both on morphological measurements and radio marked birds being harvested. There have also been some concerns from California that we are not monitoring the radio marked birds efficiently enough to assess their total movements into Oregon during the hunt period. We are working on enhancing our monitoring efforts. For a variety of reason I have sensed great sensitivity by many biologists about allowing any harvest of Tules and so I am striving to work through those issues. But these things do take time.

I would like to emphasize that ODFW had to make some major commitment to the USFWS and flyway partners on monitoring efforts during the hunt, including telemetry work, bag checks and population counts. But both USFWS and California have assisted greatly with this ongoing monitoring. We also started assessing white goose populations last year. Without this monitoring the season would have been cancelled.

So to the present situation. In general white goose seasons, based on the growing status of most populations, will be liberalized with an increased bag limit and extended hunting framework days to March 10 throughout the Flyway. Wrangel Island snow goose populations have now exceeded the flyway management goal. With these options the flyway partners discussed overall management options and came up with the 1 white-front limit but adding 3 white geese to the overall bag. for Klamath county I believe most see this as a way to still help with depredation problems but still be very conservative with Tule harvest until we can better assess overall harvest. It was also thought the larger bag limit would offer more recreational time while supporting landowner assistance.

To be quite honest, if we had stayed the course I don't believe we would have seen an increase in the white-front bag limit and could have potentially lost the late season option all together. This course gives us a chance to maintain some hunting while we sort through the Tule dilemma. While I don't think it will be unanimous, the majority of the key landowner contacts that sought this hunt in the first place like the idea of putting some emphasis on white goose harvest. Ground counts last year also showed predominately that Ross' geese made up the majority of the white birds in the area and they can certainly take increased harvest and we don't have a mixed subspecies issue like we do with white-fronts.

I see this as another baby step in evaluating the potential for what can happen in the future. I would not rule out a larger combined white-front and white goose limit in the future but some data gaps need to be filled. So I would urge patient from the hunting community as we do have some method to our "flyway madness" And again this hunt is currently not meant to provide maximum hunter harvest but rather use hunting as landowner assistance, primarily in the form of hazing and not allowing birds to settle in on one property for an extended time. The shift to white geese this year may not seem popular now but I suspect it will attract new people to the hunt. And a lot of thought and evaluation has been put into this recommendation and the flyway partnership will continue to try to address depredation issues in the basin and allowing hunting to be a priority in that endeavor.

I know there has been a cascade of dialogue going on about this on the internet. I would not object to you having this posted on appropriate sites to help inform hunters of where the flyway is coming from on this matter. I would also like to send the message to all hunters to not purposefully target neck collared Tule geese as this hampers our efforts to come up with a population objective and hopefully allow more hunting in the future. Trophy hunting for collared birds does nothing for hunting other than setting up the possibility for more restrictive hunting. While not the sole reason, trophy hunting of birds at Summer Lake played a role in the reduced bag limit that will be implemented this year.

I hope this has helped answer any questions you may have.

Regards,



Brad BalesMigratory Game Bird ProgramOregon Department of Fish and Wildlife3406 Cherry Avenue, NESalem, OR 97303Telephone 503.947.6322Cell 503.381.7621Fax 503.947.6330email bradley.d.bales@state.or.us

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