Tag Archives: Federal Duck Stamps

A Birder’s Band for Vermont?

Young Duck HunterThe onset of waterfowl hunting has spawned a lively discussion on VTBirds about ways for birders to get more credit for supporting conservation efforts.  As I blogged last month, we get little respect from our contributions for Federal duck stamps and even Ducks Unlimited memberships.  My friend Scott put it like this on the list:

The thing is that the current system doesn’t provide a clear way for state and federal managers to know whether the purchaser of a duck stamp is extractive** or non-extractive oriented (or both) in his / her interests.

Consequently, when conservation issues come before legislative or administrative bodies, the voice of all those who might have non-extractive ideas / wishes are very difficult to measure, whereas the licenses and stamps are widely quoted as the constituency interested in extractive issues.

This is not to say that extractive and non-extractive conservationists don’t have many opinions in common.  Nor to suggest that there are not many of us who support both extractive and non-extractive organizations and activities.  There are.

It is just that there is a huge body of non-extractive recreationalists, citizen scientists, hikers, birders, feeder-watchers, lepidopterists, dragonfly lovers, park visitors, etc. who really don’t currently have a place at the table.

A non-extractive conservation support button, stamp, tag, etc. would give that audience a way to have its presence quantified and votes counted.  To me, that has great value.

**  Scott explains: To me, these seem like a nice terms to delineate between environmental management practices that are purposed to provide harvestable populations vs. those that are designed to maximize diversity / conserve ecosystems.  The words Hunters and Birders tend to polarize and divide.  People may be both, and have both objectives in mind in certain circumstances.

One of the interesting references in the discussion is the program in Maine to sell bands for binoculars to support bird conservation.  They describe like this:

Maine’s hunters and anglers through license fees and equipment taxes have paid for the bulk of these efforts. With declining funds available for non-game and endangered species work, our bird conservation efforts now also depend on Maine’s birding community to help conserve what you care about.  For years bird bands have helped biologists understand migratory bird population trends and habitat needs. Now the Maine Birder Band is available as a tool for wildlife watchers of all stripes to support the non-game and endangered species conservation efforts of your Wildlife Department.

The Maine Birder Band can be proudly worn on your binocular strap to show your support for bird conservation. The number on each band will be registered to the buyer, and bands include a phone number where lost and recovered optics can be reported allowing us to notify the registered owner.

So, there has been some constructive posts on this subject on the list serve and it is obvious that many Vermont (and elsewhere) birders are willing to put their money where their mouth is.  We’ll see where this goes but it’s good to get a positive discussion going.

hunter photo by thefixer       birder band photo  Maine Inland Fisheries and Wildlife

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Duck, Geese — Hunting Season is Near

I have been reading Julie Zickfoose’s fine book, The Bluebird Effect.  It’s a series of stories about bird rehabilitation and observation and is the kind of book that is nice to take your time reading.  I have it on the iPad and read a chapter or two a week.  Her chapter “Love and Death among the Cranes” brought back some memories from last year and raised some issues on hunting and birding.

Last year, we travelled to the Southwest with our Airstream trailer.  We were planning to come down I-81 and when I heard of a rare Hooded Crane hanging out with the Sandhill Cranes at the Hiwassee Wildlife Refuge in Tennessee.  I blogged about it — we saw hundreds of cranes and a Ross’s Goose but the Hooded Crane was not around while we were there.  What I did see was Sandhill Cranes in fields everywhere and learned that Tennessee was considering opening up a hunting season for them.  (They delayed the decision for a couple of years.)

Julie writes passionately about the controversy in her book and on her blog.  I’m not anti-hunting but do have issues with the shooting of majestic birds like Sandhill Cranes and Snow Geese.  And now, our local little pond, a quiet water supply for Vermont’s capitol city, is not only now opened for non-motorized boating but also probably duck and geese hunting.  Hundreds of birders are angry, worried, depressed, feeling helpless, or all of the above.  It makes me wonder why I have a duck stamp on my binoculars.

The storyline goes like this:  Birders and other frequenters of National Wildlife Refuges should purchase a $15 Federal Duck Stamp each year in order to gain free admission to refuges. Conservationists buy Federal Duck Stamps because they know that the stamps are, dollar for dollar, one of the best investments one can make in the future of America’s wetlands. For every dollar you spend on Federal Duck Stamps, ninety-eight cents goes directly to purchase vital habitat for protection in the National Wildlife Refuge System.

So, every year, I buy a duck stamp at the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge (even though I have a life-long Senior Pass) and put it prominently on my binoculars.  The word is that the majority of stamps are bought by non-hunters but even if that is the case, we get little or no credit in surveys.

Here’s how blogger Mike puts it:   When the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service puts together the National Survey, it ascribes zero dollars of Duck Stamp purchases to wildlife watchers. Zero. If you can find the statement in the National Survey that acknowledges that some of the Duck Stamp money comes from wildlife watchers, I’ll eat my beloved Midwest Birding Symposium hat (or more likely just some wild duck.) But that’s not going to happen.

So, when I go to Parker River or over to Lake Champlain and hear the guns booming just outside the refuges, I’ll try to remember that money from licenses, shells, stamps, etc goes toward habitat and that hunters love birds as much as we do — with a nice bottle of wine on the side.