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Ducks Unlimited Podcast is a constant discussion of all things waterfowl; from in-depth hunting tips and tactics, to waterfowl biology, research, science, and habitat updates. The DU Podcast is the go-to resource for waterfowl hunters and conservationists. Ducks Unlimited is the world's leader in wetlands conservation.
Mike Brasher: Welcome back, everybody, to the Ducks Unlimited podcast. We're here with Kevin Krey, Waterfowl Program Leader. Did I get that right? Yep, absolutely. Waterfowl Program Leader for Texas Parks and Wildlife. I also have my co-host, Chris Jennings, and we're diving deep into Texas Parks and Wildlife's recent decision to suspend the Light Use Conservation Order. And Kevin, when we left off, you took us to the area, to the topic of what's been happening with mid-continent light goose population trends over the past number of years. This is probably where I will say a few things on behalf of Ducks Unlimited because people that have been paying attention to this for any number of years knows that Our former chief biologist, Dr. Bruce Batt, played a leading role in this charge to get the Light Use Conservation Order implemented. He was involved in a lot of the research and, heck, we have books, we have VHS tapes around here, there are videos, Arctic Ecosystem in Peril. I think there are a lot of people that expect Ducks Unlimited to kind of stay silent on this issue and remain in the shadows because of the high visibility that we had in communicating about this issue and promoting the need for this conservation tool, this management tool. But we're not gonna stay in the shadows. We're not gonna avoid the conversation because we can't. It's not what we do. We do bring these topical stories to, or timely stories to our members and our constituents. And this is certainly one of those. We've been waiting. waiting for the right moment to have this conversation with Kevin. The timing is a little bit different and our involvement in this is going to be a little bit different because, as I've said repeatedly, we don't engage in harvest regulations. Kevin would probably point out again that this is not a harvest season, but we… We may, I mean, we'll be involved in some of these discussions, but really what we're talking about right now are the decisions on the part of the individual states on whether to implement this management tool, and that's Texas's obligation, or Texas's responsibility and opportunity to do that, and that's what we've seen. No one has contacted us, at least to engage in any of these discussions on whether the Light Goose Conservation Order itself needs to remain in place. That's a conversation that is going to largely fall to the federal agencies and state agencies. If folks want Ducts Unlimited to be involved in that or offer our comments, I'm sure they'll reach out to us. But for right now, we're talking about Texas's decision on what to do with the
Chris Jennings: with that conservation order within their state, and so… Yeah, and Kevin, just from my curiosity, I know you guys, ever since I've been doing the podcast, I realized that most of the state biologists and, you know, biologists in general, you guys come from a pretty tight group. You all mostly know each other, state by state. Are you talking to other states? I mean, are some of these other state biologists calling you and like, hey man, like, I can't believe you're gonna do this, or… Or, oh, you know, we're going to wait and see how this works out. You know, do you have other state, well, just reaching out to you and asking about, you know, just the process and, and what, how you guys are doing it.
Kevin Kraai: The answer is yes to all those, you know, obviously I'm not going to be throwing a burning toss.
Mike Brasher: No, I would not do that. Oh, come on.
Kevin Kraai: Come on, Kevin. Yeah. The answer is yes to all those. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of people that grabbed their popcorn and wanted to watch how it played out. Because, you know, they've made comments like, well, you know, we never really never sat well with us from day one. That's kind of the interesting thing is the amount of people that have come up to me and said that very important people in some of the agencies that you just talked about just never sat well with us from day one, you know, professors, researchers. reaching out and asking questions and so yeah across the board it is that was part of the plan to begin with uh unquestionably i'm those that know me i kind of i kind of have a plan when when things start i start building that snowball to see how big i'm going to get it and and the reality is i did want to be that first domino to fall i did want to be and it's fitting that it's texas very fitting in my opinion that we kind of start the conversation, that we lead by example, what we think is best, because the reality is, I do feel that a conservation order is a mistake, continentally. And I have thought that for a long time, not necessarily in the majority in that thinking at all. And so, yeah, those conversations take place. We sit in these flyway meetings, we talk about it, we have the opportunity to comment on you know, shared management plans. The thing is, there's so many people that don't even realize that mid-continent light geese have declined like they have. And so even biologists, I can assure you, policymakers in all these agencies and states don't know. They absolutely don't know. Uh, that information just really hasn't been leaking out. You know, there's just such a 10,000 headed ugly monster, as I'll put it, uh, that we created with this thing that it is, it is hard to put back in the barn. It is very difficult to be put back in the barn. This is WMD Iraq. It's very, very difficult to put back in the barn. And, um, it's, it's just the training that you just, it's tough to get out in front of, um, even people that feel the way I do, um, are unwilling or insecure about stepping out and saying it.
Chris Jennings: Well, I'd imagine there's a lot of economic impact. to You know, but those, those have pretty much disappeared by this point. So now, you know, talking about it outside of Texas, you know, I look at it, you know, I bum around a lot in Arkansas and Mississippi and Missouri and, you know, Illinois, you know, these states are, you know, there, there are massive operations, you know, economically, uh, that would be impacted by this. And I, I'm just curious if you guys kind of looked at it from that perspective, even in Texas, like, man, we got to be careful with this or is it, yeah. Okay.
Kevin Kraai: You know, I just said, you know, the trends in hunter participation and light goose conservation are, this is statewide, not just Texas coast, as you know, a little over a thousand hunters. I've been pretty steady at that. But the reality is there is people that are saying you're going to impact you know, my bank account economically. We took that into deep consideration. That is something we definitely paid attention to and considered. And one of the main reasons that we allowed the conservation or the regular hunting season to extend all the way to mid-February. You get to mid-February in the state of Texas, especially the Gulf Coast, there's not a lot of snow geese left. Um, and so we did think about that and that's main reason why we changed our recommendation. So and then yeah, I mean that's the 10,000, you know, headed ugly headed monster that we created is the fact that it is created this this unique little, uh, puzzle of industry and participation. And I've even heard biologists say that it's such an economic impact to my state, we'll never get rid of it. They say they'll get rid of the regular season first. And I've heard researchers say, we know it didn't work. We know it never accomplished the goals we wanted, but it's a sustainable hunting season. And that gets me riled up real quick. It's like, nope, that's not what we designed this for. That's not what we were told it was going to be. It's not a hunting season, and it's not about sustainability. This is outside the Migratory Bird Treaty Act for a reason. And that very, very specific reason was potential damage to fragile Arctic systems.
Mike Brasher: That's it. It's all of us. So let's go there. That conversation was happening, what would that have been, early 90s? Is that when that would have been?
Kevin Kraai: Mid, yeah. Early to mid 90s is when it started to get elevated, yeah.
Mike Brasher: And so I guess try to summarize what we've learned about that. You introduced it at the beginning, but I also want us to touch on this idea, ask the question of, did we make the wrong decision then? Was there any kind of conspiracy at play at that time? Or were the people that were looking at the data that were available to us making what they thought was the right decision, given the concern for the resource, given the concern for more than just snow geese, but a lot of the other birds. I mean, that was what we heard from Rocky Rockwell is that was the kicker, is that there was evidence, not just a belief, there was some evidence that based on the data that we had at hand, there would be some impact to other species, Arctic species, a big if here, if the conditions we saw at the place where the data was being collected was being reproduced across the broader Arctic. So you take it from there.
Kevin Kraai: Yeah, that's a… Put it on a T for me, right? Let's see where you step on your own tongue. Yeah, you mentioned Rocky Rockwell and that's really an interesting part of this conversation is from his optics and from Dr. Rockwell's stance and where he was doing his research is a very unique spot. It's right there where On the west coast of Hudson Bay, where literally there was an existing small snow goose colony, some say somewhere around 10% of the overall mid-continent light goose population bred. 90% of the mid-continent light goose population bred much further away in the higher arc. But 100% of all those mid-continent white geese stopped at that research site, along that stretch of the west shoreline of Hudson Bay, and staged there for a given period of time. That was La Perouse Bay, right? La Perouse Bay, yes, sir. It might be a few days, it might be a week that they were all there, but they were there. And that's where 100% is interesting. Those of us that remember this conversation beginning, I was a fledgling college student watching all this play out with big eyes and very, very interested watching it play out. It's kind of interesting that where I am in my career now. in talking about it. But when I was watching all this play out, it was, you saw these photographs. Photographs mean everything. Very, very few people get to go to the Arctic. It's a very inaccessible landscape. It's hard to get there. And so you really got to take people's word at a lot of things when you go to the Arctic. And these pictures started coming out. And it's black and white. They're color, actually, but it's just night and day difference between what the Arctic tundra looked like inside a cage where there was no goose herbivory, geese weren't allowed to get to outside. Those photographs began to come out. That is super, super influential. The reality is 100% of all those photographs were taken in La Prusse Bay, that one area where all the geese stage. Where 90% of these birds nested, I kind of use past tense because there's so few of them now and colonies have completely disappeared off the map. where 90% of those birds nested and originate from, you could not duplicate those photographs. And so, in Rocky's sense, he's doing what's best and he's making recommendations what's best for that piece of the landscape, without question. And he had very strong evidence, watching that landscape get denuded and change. It's also that area now, there's essentially no nesting snow geese there anymore. And it's also that area now where they're documenting recovery of that landscape a lot faster than they ever predicted. So, you know, we have proven if you remove that herbivory that, you know, that ecosystem can actually recover a little bit quicker than they ever predicted. So, yeah, it was a small spot on the landscape where a lot of those decisions were made overall to push us down this path. and, you know, other researchers in other places begin to, you know, kind of look at the same information and slowly information started to come out over the last 25 years saying, well, yeah, you know, maybe overestimated or underestimated, whatever you want to call it, potentially even exaggerated the ability to snow geese to impact that Arctic. And so, yeah, that's kind of the new information we're dealing with. Those individuals And many of them, they're very dear friends of mine, all of them, every single one of them, with the exception of Bruce Brad, I never had the pleasure to really spend any time with him. But Vernon Bevel, Texas Parks and Wildlife, unbelievable key feature in person in this conversation, who used to be my boss and run our small game program, and a very, very strong force, to say the least, in the history of waterfowl and continental waterfowl management. He was on board. Bruce Batt was on board. Those guys, they were using the information they had. And the reality is they weren't wrong. There was no forces at work to try and get around the Migratory Buried Treaty Act and things like that. And so I'll be the first to admit that. Just 25, 30 years later, we have different information. And now we're seeing changes to that population that were unprecedented. None of us ever predicted. You know, researchers like Dr. Alazaska said, I never thought we'd be talking about this. You know, he kind of put out projections and predictions at multiple Goose conferences. And it seems like they keep throwing us a curveball each time we try and predict what's in the next four or five years. And so.
Mike Brasher: Kevin, that's one of the, one of the things that Rocky was, was telling us back whenever we interviewed him, I think he used the phrase, um, they cheated once we've just, when we thought we had snow geese figured out they cheated, they started doing something that they weren't supposed to do.
Kevin Kraai: And I always enjoyed that.
Mike Brasher: They started using areas that we didn't think they would use. They started adapting to that changing system, the system that they had kind of helped to change. But one of the things that I reiterate often is this is an example, another example of the importance of sustained investments in science. These type of conversations that we're having today with Kevin, we can't have if we don't have contemporary information. If we don't have a thorough long-term understanding of waterfowl populations, their habitats, across broad scales of space and time. And so we are huge advocates for collecting that information that you need to understand the system, how it changes, and then make the right decisions given the information that you have at a given point in time. And hopefully you got to keep collecting it. I think one of the next big pieces of this puzzle is a discussion about what is happening with mid-continent population trajectories. Chris was mentioning to me that he was, some of the information that I shared with him regarding the background on this conversation, he was not He had not heard much about the decline in light goose abundance there for the mid-continent. I think you said an 84 or 86 percent decline over some number of years. So, walk us through that and what have we learned? We've spoken with Ray about some of this on a few previous episodes, but I think this is going to be the, we'll have a fuller picture of this because we've seen now with this conversation because the past few years have shown some more dramatic declines and steps downward.
Chris Jennings: And Kevin, as you're doing this, explain how we're getting that number. I think that's important. You know, I was telling Mike, I was like, well, I know for a fact they didn't do anything in the Arctic, you know, during 2020 or 2021 due to COVID, you know, and I don't know, that might've carried into 2022. And then even last year, they had the massive floods. I'd gotten some information from Mike. where they researched in some of the areas along the Hudson Bay, weren't able to get up there because it was pretty much flooded. And just not like me, I'm the guy who knows just enough to be dangerous, but doesn't really know what I'm talking about half the time. But how are we getting that 2.8 million number estimate of population of mid-continent geese?
Kevin Kraai: So yeah, that's, you know, 15, 12, 15 years ago, you know, things weren't adding up. When we add up all the geese that states are counting in the winter during their midwinter inventory, it wasn't adding up. We didn't see correlative giant jumps when we thought they were really abundant, and then we didn't see correlative giant declines. And so, the management community overall realized that flying around in little airplanes, pretending to count these huge concentrations of geese, was the most effective monitoring tool and begin to look at some other options of monitoring. They're certainly not new in any way, shape, or form. They've been around for decades and decades and decades of using a couple of different streams of data to actually get at a abundance estimate. Those two really important streams of data happen to be things that we've been doing for a long time. One, probably most importantly is just the harvest estimates, the overall Fish and Wildlife Service, Canadian Wildlife Service harvest estimates that we get each year. You correlate that back to a harvest rate, which we get from banding data, you can basically come up with a population estimate. And that indirect population estimate has become more and more accepted in the waterfowl management community over the years for a number of different reasons. You can get true abundance, you can get continental abundance, you can get some stuff that we never got from just flying around an airplane. So years ago, that decision was made that from X point on for the management of a number of species all the way to white-winged doves, or excuse me, mourning doves were now using that same population estimator. to inform harvest strategies. And so it's a very important piece of that puzzle. So banding is important. Harvest rates are important, or harvest estimates are important. And that's what kind of feeds that. And so we moved to that. That was the decision the community made. And basically soon after we moved to that, that's when populations with snow geese were near 20 million birds. So it was very, very high. And so I was like, why is there this difference between this this population estimator and the midwinter estimate of people flying around airplanes will, you know, that's a conversation comes up often and I deal with often but the reality is. There's there's biases in everything we do without question. And you just kind of got to take the one with the least biases and give you the best information. And the reality is trying to fly around and count these things in airplanes. Again, I keep talking about long career and, you know, potentially coming to a close someday. But I've spent many, many, many, many hours in airplanes counting these things. I got photographs of me doing it right here by my desk. as I look up and tens of millions of geese I've looked at outside that plane and the one thing I will honestly say when it's all said and done is I feel less confident about the value in running around counting things out of airplanes than I ever have. It's just it's a very difficult process that has its challenges and so without going down that rabbit hole too far, that you're right. That's the estimator. It's called the Lincoln-Peterson estimate. We're using banding data, we're using harvest data, and that is what we're using. You look at those trends in harvest and you look at harvest rates, the amount of bands that are recovered on an annual basis and reported, comparing that back to harvest estimate, you come up with a population estimate. It's actually very, very simple math. And using that population estimator, we've begun to see this unprecedented, very, very steep decline in these birds. The second question that keeps coming up is, yeah, COVID. Well, the reality is, yeah, you're right. Most of those colonies in Arctic, those research sites, people weren't able to get to for a number of different reasons. for a year or two, and as you mentioned last year, there was a very important research site known as Carrick Lake, and that's in the Central Arctic, that they just simply couldn't land because of how early the ice was melting and snow was melting. So, it was unsafe conditions, so they didn't ban there either. But there are other places that banding did occur. There are very, very smart individuals out there that can deal with gaps in databases and begin to deal with more than just direct recoveries, those birds that were banded and recovered in the same year, and use indirect recoveries. And there's birds carrying bands out there for 15, 20 years, and so there's still unbelievable sets of valuable information out there that very, very smart people with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and modelers and statisticians can gap those bridges very scientifically, credibly. Yeah. And so that's how we gap those bridges. You know, we're slowly getting better and are, you know, re-establishing, you know, these Arctic research sites and getting banding done. But there is ways that we can gap those bridges and we have.
Chris Jennings: And I think, you know, educating the general public on that, just, you know, like you mentioned the Lincoln-Peterson, you know, and it's an estimate. There's a plus or minus variable to that number. And the main reason why I say that is because when you put on paper, you know, 2.8 million snow geese in the mid-continent population, you know, I deal with the general public on a regular basis with, like, even the migration alerts for light goose conservation order. Well, you know, on March 1st, this is an example, you know, there's 2 million snow geese being recorded at Lois Bluff. And I've got, I know guys who are shooting them in Indiana, Illinois, Mississippi, Arkansas, you know, you know what I mean? So, So, and all of other places throughout Missouri. So, like, the general hunter is going to look at that number and say, so you're telling me that, you know, every single goose is almost at lowest bluff. And it's like, no, that, and I'm trying to explain, no, it's a population estimate. So, I think that's where the general public.
Kevin Kraai: whoever said there was 2 million birds there has a lot of ability to be biased as well. That is true. Very much so, because I've been that person. I've been that person on an airplane or whatever they're doing. Estimating those massive flocks of birds is very difficult. And so, yeah, the other part of that conversation, which I heard this year, over and over of some large concentrations in Missouri and like you said, North Kansas and whatnot. They come back and say, so you're telling me that 70, 50% of all the light geese in the mid-continent population is just one spot? I'm like, go back to our conversations earlier about these birds learning and changing their behavior and avoidance of humans Yes, it very likely could happen. They are getting in more organized groups. They are getting more intelligent and they just have to in order to continue to survive and be successful. And so, yes, I mean, that is part of what we're talking about here is these birds have changed behavior and distributions and are making these strange giant concentrations that people talk about. Yeah, it could be a huge percent of the mid-continent flock together at once.
Mike Brasher: So, a couple of things here. One, and I think this is important for people to know, with the Lincoln-Peterson estimate, and Kevin, you correct me if I'm wrong here, but when we talk about, what'd you say it was, 2.8 million?
Kevin Kraai: Yeah, that was the most recent estimate.
Mike Brasher: The most recent estimate. That's a fall, that's a fall estimate.
Kevin Kraai: Yeah, that's a fall flight, which is a pretty interesting benefit of the LP.
Mike Brasher: Yeah, and it's a one-year lag, right? So, it would technically represent the fall population from 22. So, it's a one-year lag from when it's released. It was released last fall, last winter. This past winter, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I'll be honest. I've talked to Chris about this, and whenever I first heard of that number, I'm like, I was probably one of the folks and probably one of many folks that scratched their head and questions like, hmm, man, I don't know. I don't know. And I'll also say, that's okay. That's okay for scientists and for anyone else to say, hmm, I don't know about that. It's okay, it's understandable, it's appropriate for us to constantly question the information that we have. The moment that we all stop questioning the information that we have, stop asking important questions, probing questions, is the moment that we stop learning. As Kevin has talked about, there is bias in every one of these data sets. One of the most important things that we can do is acknowledge that bias, try to figure out where it comes from and try to develop ways to overcome it or account for it. And it is a constant work in progress. Just because we have this new, well, it's not new, but a relatively new implementation of an old method. for the purpose of managing populations, I'm talking about the Lincoln-Peterson estimator, doesn't mean that we have stopped evaluating all the assumptions that are present in that estimation method. And there are a number of them, and they do involve multiple data streams. Each of those data streams, as Kevin has talked about, involves their own potential biases and potential warts. We're aware of some of them. We're not aware of others, but we're constantly looking. And I say we being the larger waterfowl management and science community. And the day we stop doing that is the day we stop learning. And what we know today will be different from what we know two years from now and three years from now. And that is why our commitment to this constant learning is so important. What did I get wrong, Kevin?
Kevin Kraai: Nothing, nothing. You know, to kind of add on to that. We're fully aware of the biases. We're fully aware of, like Chris said, that, you know, there's error bars associated with all these estimates. You know, it's plus or minus, you know, two, three million. And so we build that bias and that uncertainty is the best word. We build that uncertainty into our management. Because we don't react to a $2.8 million bird estimate, a single one-year estimate. All of our management plans for these species, we try and level that out. For this particular conversation and the current shared management plans between the Central Mississippi Flyway for light geese, we use a three-year running average of that population estimator to kind of try and level some of that out so that we're not making knee-jerk reactions. And we do that with all kinds of other stuff, largely all of our goose management. But yeah, we try and deal with that uncertainty in other ways so that things can kind of play out. Our research, our management, our priorities should always be as a waterfowl management community to improve on harvest estimates, to improve on banding data. to have more of it, to get a much better understanding without getting way deep in the woods. You know, there's people out there that shoot birds that don't report bans, but we got to know about that. And so, there's really important stuff that goes on that we have to account for to level all that out. And so, priority of the waterfowl management enterprise should always be to continue to fund and support modernization and research and better understanding of these things. And the reality is, again, not to go down a crazy path right now, there's a lot of that that's at risk right now. There's a lot of budget talks, there's a lot of things going on, prioritizations that are just a reality of life and decision makers of high-level people. And so, yeah, we're real nervous watching some of these conversations play out, potentially at the risk of not getting a better understanding of how these things are used in our management. We're doing research all the time of alternatives, like I said, modernization, it's happening as we speak. Very specifically, a project that I'm involved with about getting better estimates of proportion of the species that is being reported in the harvest surveys, which could have a huge impact to these Lincoln-Peterson estimators. So we're watching this. But what's very interesting about this conversation is it isn't a singular thing that we're paying attention to. There's multiple different streams of information that aren't connected that are saying there is a very interesting change with mid-continent light geese that is all coming to the same summation. It's not just, hey, harvest estimates and banding data are saying this. You're seeing colonies disappear. We haven't even dove into why this is occurring. I think that was one of the conversations we were going to have. Completely separate from all this stuff is productivity estimates. And that's what's driving this decline in mid-continent light geese is the fact that we're not raising as many goslings as we used to. And those productivity estimates that are correlative to this population estimator, very correlative, have shown only three out of the last 15 years where we've had enough juveniles in the flock to even maintain a population, let alone grow it. And so that's a very interesting part of this conversation of why is this decline even occurring? And those are two different sets of data that are showing the same thing. And so that kind of gives us strength, kind of gives us comfort and knowing that, okay, here's this trend using this set of data. But it correlates to this trend over here saying something else or saying the same thing that is completely unconnected. And so that's kind of gives us strength and confidence in some of the things we're seeing.
Mike Brasher: Kevin, I'm glad you went there, because I was going to ask you about those other data streams, but you beat me to it, in that it's not just the one Lincoln-Peterson estimator data set that's telling us that we have a declining population. Now, I don't know, I'm not as familiar with the data to know if the degree of that decline is as great for, I guess it probably is, though, for the Carrick Lake Colony. I remember Ray talking about that and how they collect data on the number of estimated They collect data on the number of nesting snow geese at that colony. They also collect data on the size, the aerial size of that colony. And back three or four years ago when we were talking with him, he was citing the declines that they had seen in both of those metrics. I forget exactly what the rate of decline was, but it was pretty steep. It will be very, very interesting to see what those metrics are whenever they get back there, hopefully this year. I think that will be one. That'll be one of the most eagerly anticipated sets of numbers to come out. But then also, yeah, he talked about the declining productivity numbers or depressed productivity numbers there, which are estimated from some of those surveys there on the prairies now, a completely independent data set. And I guess the one bright spot in that data stream is last year, there was, I think, an indication of an uptick in productivity from mid-continent light yeast, right, Kevin?
Kevin Kraai: Yeah, unquestionably, there was an uptick and it's been been very intrigued by some of the rhetoric associated with it. Some of my colleagues and some of the words they use, you know, we just been so lulled into poor productivity and that that kind of constant idea that just we just we didn't have a lot of young in the flock for, you know, a decade. I've seen some of my colleagues say it was like excellent production, used some really interesting adjectives. But yeah, we did. There was somewhere around when the final results of colleagues in the Canadian prairies, again, this will account for all of the breeding grounds. They all congregate in the Canadian prairies and so that removes some of those biases associated with individual colonies and what other weather events they had or whatever issues they had with ice out and green up. You know, that could be a localized issue when they go to the prairies to do these flock scans. It's essentially they just sit there with a scope and pull over on the side of the road or creep out into the field and scan these flocks. And you're looking for basically a ratio of juveniles to adults. Yeah, the results this year were on average around 20%. which is much better than it has been, much better. But the reality is 18 to 20% only maintains a population. So we're still not seeing productivity even with that uptick that is favorable to really grow a population. And so it's kind of good to keep that in perspective that we need 50% of the flock to be juveniles to really start to see birds populations grow. If we saw these productivity numbers in ducks, we'd be scared. We'd be real scared. So yeah, that's the things that are going on. And so that's incredibly important piece of the puzzle that we managers use. And they're so very thankful that Canadian Wildlife Service and their staff continue to do that and share that information with us so that we can make decisions as we move forward as a community on future black goose management.
Chris Jennings: Yeah, do you give any, I guess, credibility to, you know, I deal with a lot of the freelance riders who are interviewing hunters throughout the seasons, and especially with the light use conservation order, it's very, you know, targeted towards specific regions. But, you know, this year really kind of correlates with what you said. You know, these guys are saying, hey, there's pretty good numbers of Jewies in there, you know. And that's what a lot of these guys are looking for because if you look at social media where these guys are posting pictures of, you know, the more successful. Yeah. I mean, they're killing majority of the juveniles, you know, let's those adult birds, even the best goose hunters out there are, are, will admit that it's, it's tough to decoy big flocks of adults.
Kevin Kraai: Now we always, I mean, all the management we do, all the ducks, geese, we like seeing lots of young birds. for a number of different reasons. It makes for smiling, happy hunters, you know, the final outcome for sure. So yeah, that's real. The other thing that just the poor snow goose keeps going through is, you know, the last two years had an apparent decent uptick in productivity, but this ugly monster has kind of sprung up, and that's avian influenza that has really targeted juvenile snow geese. So they really can't get a break. There's been instances of many thousands of juvenile snow geese succumbing to avian influenza over the last couple of years. So that doesn't help things either. So when you're not producing enough snow geese to grow a population and then you get a decent hatch and a bunch of those die from that, and then say you shoot. We talk about additivity and compensatory ideas all the time. And when you shoot one, two, three million and you didn't raise one, two, three million, the reality is gun now has an impact on next year's population. And that's what we're doing right now.
Mike Brasher: Kevin, you read my mind again. One of the other things I had on my list here was the effect of HPAI, highly pathogenic avian influenza. I have not- I gave him all your notes. Did you? That's interesting because I just typed it out two minutes ago. I have not participated in conversations with the Central Flyway Tech Section or your state agency around HPAI. I've been involved in many other conversations about it. What's the sense among your colleagues on whether HPAI had any significant effect? And significant is a vague term, but… Population effect. Sure. What's your thinking and your colleagues thinking on that? Yeah.
Kevin Kraai: Largely, the rhetoric is still, it's kind of like those photos that you see of the denuded vegetation in the Arctic of the exclosures. When you visually see it, it means more. And so when you see photographs out of South Dakota or Arkansas or wherever these photographs were coming from of hundreds and hundreds and in some cases thousands of dead geese just laying there, You know, it's impactful. It's impactful to your to your way of thinking and the way you you think about the big picture. But I believe overall there's no strong evidence that that was that we're getting to the population effect yet. You know, even though there's instances where there is, you know, multiple thousands in one spot, but it's still compared to the big picture. Most of the rhetoric is still not population effect yet.
Mike Brasher: But it doesn't help.
Kevin Kraai: We can all agree that if you're trying to sustain… Yeah, and the sad part is more so than any species, you know, again, learning how this all plays out, more so than any avian species, it seems like juvenile snow geese were the most susceptible. You know, we, we have incredible, we have, we have data showing incredible prevalence of avian, eyepath avian influenza, um, and blue-winged teal with no die-offs, none, but like 50, 60, 70% of them are carrying it. And it doesn't seem to impact them. It doesn't seem to get them to that lethal stage. Uh, but especially juvenile snow geese, they, they, they are more susceptible to it. And so, yeah, it doesn't help. You know, that's just, that's just another whammy against snow geese right now.
Mike Brasher: Kevin, I know you would have seen this, and I think it's an indication of how poor we as a conservation community have done in communicating sort of consistently on the evolving knowledge around light use populations because A lot of the comments that I saw, Chris, I'm sure you saw this as well on social media, whenever we began to see the effects of HPAI on snow geese, a lot of people would say, well, that's nature's way, that's God's way of taking care of a problem. You know, we're still sort of buying into and believing that snow geese are overabundant, are damaging the Arctic. And we've not done a great job sort of communicating our new understanding of that and also vilifying this, what is actually, it is an incredible creature when you think about how massive these flocks are. I really wouldn't, Kevin, I have to give you credit for sort of being among the leaders of this, carrying this flag of wanting to change the way we talk about snow geese, vilifying them, that is, they are a much more charismatic, much more amazing bird than what we give them credit for by way of the way we talk about them. Sky carp, whatever other kind of derogatory term you want to label, that you hear people label them with, they are certainly deserving of much more respect because they are still one of the most fascinating spectacles that we have in nature in all of the world, you can say, certainly in North America. You put somebody who's never seen that spectacle out in amongst it, and they're in awe. They are massive in concentration. Sure, people can get upset at them because they eat their duck food and all that type of stuff. But it is still just an incredible phenomenon of nature. Folks like yourself, Kevin, and others deserve a lot of credit for trying to change that narrative.
Kevin Kraai: Yeah, I couldn't have said it better. This is one of the most amazing species left on certainly North America, but not You can include planet I believe one of the early early documentaries on planet earth featured giant cup concentrations of snow geese and how inspiring that is you know we don't have bison anymore we don't have passenger pigeons we don't have those things and so you know when you when you think about massive massive concentrations and and. all the visual and all the audible sounds that come from that. You got sandhill cranes on the North Platte River, and you got snow geese in whatever place they're loaded up. And so the respect for this bird has waned. I can't point my finger at anyone, and I would never, but that rhetoric, and I can assure you every single person that has ever been involved making this where we are with this management of this species, they all have respect for it. And they all, those that are still with us, are very disappointed in where we've ended up with the rhetoric and the conversation surrounding snow geese and the lack of respect that has occurred to the species over the years. And so, yeah, I mean, it's a slow process. And again, part of my goals in planning and doing this and the timing of it That is a huge part of why I wanted to get on this podcast, to talk to people, to make changes for Texas that we feel is in their best interest, our best interest, without question. Bring respect back to snow geese is a big part of the rhetoric.
Mike Brasher: I have one other kind of question, sort of like unanswered questions, things that we're continuing to study, what's sort of the next, what's the next area of inquiry for Snow Geese, and so I'll frame that up here better in a second, but Chris, do you have any other? No, I'm good. Anything else right now? Okay, so, and Kevin, this is going to be sort of a multi- Maybe I'll make a statement and then sort of ask a question. This gets to something that you and I talked about a few weeks ago. So early on, and we probably didn't talk in detail about this, we can give a little bit of coverage right now, but you did mention, however, that there have been some studies that looked at whether we saw increases in adult mortality rates or decreases in adult survival rate, let me put it like that, as a result of the Light Goose Conservation Order implementation, because early on, When you do the population dynamics analysis of this population, it's a long-lived species, the best way, most efficient way of controlling that population is by impacting adult survival rate. And that's what we were hoping to accomplish, the managers were hoping to accomplish through the implementation of the Light Use Conservation Order. Ray Alesauskas and others have done the analysis and they found no relationship no decline in adult survival rates through the years. And so, if you identify specifically as the objective for implementation of the Light Use Conservation Order to be the reduction in adult survival rate, then I think I would agree with you and all of my colleagues that say the Light Use Conservation Order has had no was not successful at achieving its objective. You and I have had this conversation, and I've pushed back a little bit, and I did at the Arctic Goose Conference a few years ago, because we've seen declines in productivity. Now, granted, there's going to be some complex interplay on there, what's driving that decline in productivity. It's somewhat related to climate. and sort of changing spring phenology, and I don't want to get too deep into that, but my argument at that time was, are we confident enough to know that, okay, we may not be directly reducing adult survival rate, but could this constant pressure that we're putting on these birds from October through, what does it go through, May? Shoot, September. September through, what's the latest season? You can shoot them in June in Canada, can't you? What is it, Kevin? Yeah, they don't have a break. Is that May? At least May. Yeah. So my question to the community was… As long as they're on the, you know…
Kevin Kraai: And the Canadian prairies, they're illegal. And people even hunt them in the Arctic.
Chris Jennings: I was gonna say, I know guys who have hunted them in the Arctic. Wow.
Mike Brasher: So, could that constant pressure be contributing to the decline in productivity? Not solely responsible for, but contributing to declines in productivity in the presence of more challenging spring phenology, you know, spring mismatch, that type stuff. And so that's, again, one of those instances where we continue to question and critique what we think we know. Doesn't mean that we're disagreeing necessarily, we're just constantly asking more questions. And so you made me aware recently, Kevin, of some preliminary data, maybe it's a publication that's already out, that provided some insight to that. So… Yeah. Yeah.
Kevin Kraai: Honestly, you know, two years ago, whatever it was, when you brought this up to me, I I was very appreciative, and I've thought about it a lot more since. And then very ironically, some publications came out very strongly supporting your hypotheses, if you will. And so, yeah, we think about this in every… It's funny how waterfowl managers really do split themselves in their ideologic, their ideas, and the way we manage them even between ducks and geese. It's like two different worlds, two different jobs when we think about these things, but in the duck world, that's all we think about. The way we deliver habitat, the justification for delivering habitat, duck use days, every single thing we do in ducks is preparing them to be in the best shape when they get back to the prairie so they can be more successful, more productive. And so, why wouldn't that same type of theory be the same with other waterfowl species like geese? And I've thought about that a lot since, and then these papers came out, and there was this opportunity associated with COVID that no one expected. And because everybody was inside, especially in Canada, their restrictions were… In the US, everybody went to the outdoors during COVID. You know, we saw huge increases in license sales and boat sales and fishing, you know, everybody went to the outdoors and there was a period there in Canada, where they weren't even allowed to go to the outdoors and so there was this unique opportunity for people to kind of study some of the impacts of that and. And I don't even know, I feel terrible for not giving them credit, but this paper where they compared body conditions, weight, amount of fat content on their body. These are the things that we study in waterfowl or in ducks regularly. They compared body conditions of birds pre-COVID, years leading up to it and the years when there was nobody out in the field chasing them. And there was significant increases in body mass and body and fat on these birds. And the way our ideal in waterfowl management is the healthier the bird, the more productive you potentially can be, the bigger clutch size you could potentially have, the more productive across the board. And so, yeah, I've thought about that a lot since. And I think one of the drivers that we should not any longer sit there and solely say, strange climatic events in the Arctic are purely to blame for low productivity. I think one of the reasons we talked about this, one of the reasons we wanted to go down this path is to potentially change, begin to change that and hope that we can get healthier birds returning to Texas. But yeah, continentally, birds with year-round nonstop pressure, grouped up in giant flocks in deep water, harassed. It's not just us. If anybody's been around a bunch of geese, Texas coast, anywhere, there's never a moment that they're just sitting there quiet. They're constantly harassed by stuff. They're not eagles. Helicopters and helicopters. These poor birds can't get a break. They don't have anywhere really. Maybe that's why we see them in such large concentrations in some of these refuges and things, where potentially could be a significant portion of the entire mid-continent flock. That's why they're choosing to go there, because it is the area of least disturbance. And so, yeah, I think we are beginning to realize that, yeah, you're around pressure. can impact health and productivity potential. And I think that'll be a real interesting thing to look at. And I imagine researchers will start diving off into that quite a bit more if we don't see birds rebounding to populations like we've seen a decade ago, because that's a reality. Rocky said they cheated and Ray said, we never would have predicted this. And so the reality is where will we be five years from now?
Mike Brasher: Kevin, I'll have to get you to send me those articles again. Maybe I'll remind you again to send me those articles for the first time. And so I guess I would just say, It shouldn't surprise anyone that there may be more than one factor affecting what it is that we're seeing with the light goose population or any population of wild animals. I say that about ducks all the time when we talk about migration, distribution, etc. It's always more than one factor. There's different strengths of those factors. And this is just another example of that. And it's that type, those types of hypotheses and thought processes that help us identify the next research opportunities and so forth. And so that's probably a good place to sort of wrap this up and just say that people are not going to stop asking questions. We're still looking at this. We're still collecting the data. still probing the data, still trying to figure out new, develop new analyses, and Kevin, I know you're also going to be involved in research around this bird and many others, as long as you're doing what you're doing.
Kevin Kraai: Yeah, no, I can't thank you guys enough for assisting us in Texas and, you know, just be able to communicate with our public. That's always been a difficult task, and y'all allow me this platform, and it's much appreciated.
Chris Jennings: It's awesome. It's always great having you, Kevin.
Mike Brasher: Yeah. So, I saw a few minutes ago, Chris Isaac was kind of waving, just trying to wrap us up. But, you know, we could go for another half hour if you wanted to, Chris Isaac. No?
Kevin Kraai: No?
Mike Brasher: He's shaking his head no. So, we… There's probably another 20 topics we could do in an hour. There he is. And so, we'll have on a few other people, maybe over the course of the year, to talk about some of these issues, one of these, a couple of these issues in a bit more detail. That's all for now. Kevin, thank you so much for being with us and sharing your time and for, you know, being brave in the midst of some very difficult decisions. And thanks for coming on and telling the story. Yep. Thanks, Kevin.
Kevin Kraai: Thank you guys. Thank you very much. Really enjoyed it.
Chris Jennings: So you're going to do the close out? I'll do the close out, yeah. All right. I'd like to thank our guest, Kevin Cry, the Texas Waterfowl Program leader, for coming on the show today and talking about the Texas light goose conservation order and, you know, just the harvest management in Texas and how Kevin is kind of leading the charge in that. I'd like to thank Chris Isaac for putting the show together and getting it out to you. And I'd like to thank you, the listener, for joining us on the DU Podcast and supporting wetlands conservation.