In late November, CWA traveled to Washington, D.C., and met with recently nominated U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Aurelia Skipwith, as well as U.S. Department of Interior leadership, about the importance of pintail hunting opportunity to California waterfowlers.
In particular, we urged that the northern pintail adaptive harvest management strategy revision be completed as quickly as possible. That work and related pintail modeling efforts by the Pacific Flyway Council are critical to providing regulatory options that would allow for a 3-bird pintail bag limit.
For more information on our pintail efforts, please see the Chair’s Message from the Winter 2018 issue of California Waterfowl.
Also in Washington, CWA:
- Discussed the pressing need to address the Klamath Refuges’ water situation and provide additional public hunting opportunities on National Wildlife Refuges in California.
- Met with a number of representatives of our California Congressional delegation.
CWA, along with other waterfowl organizations, also recently sent a letter to the California Fish and Game Commission urging that it allow the hunting of ducks all the way through January 31st for the 2019-20 season.
The Service Regulations Committee has authorized states to extend their duck hunting season through January 31st each season so long as they do not exceed the maximum allowable number of hunt days within their respective Flyways. For California, this option would allow us to use up to 5 additional duck hunting days within the Balance of State, Southern San Joaquin and Southern California zones. Currently, we only use 102 of the 107 duck hunting days allowed within the Pacific Flyway in those zones.
The final waterfowl regulations for the 2019-20 will be set at the Commission’s April 2019 meeting.
