Flyways.us

This is an operational program that attempts to band a representative sample of ducks across a broad region of the "duck factory" - prairie Canada and north into the Northwest and Yukon territories and in portions of North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana. In Canada, 30,000 ducks are banded annually. The program costs $285,000 and takes 1,500 days to complete. The current (2002) program has not changed substantially since it became operational in 1954 - the emphasis is on banding the current year's production (ducklings) of mallards which have not yet attained flight. Enough adults are banded during this process to allow the full use of the recovery data. Other duck species are banded as they occur in the baited traps.

The banding data only becomes valuable after a recovery of the band is made. This can occur by recapturing the bird at a later date but most often occurs when hunters take a banded bird. The next step is the critical one - the hunter must report the band, typically to the Bird Banding Laboratory (BBL), which is run by the US Geological Service (USGS), Biological Resources Division. Prior to 1995, bands carried only an address and hunters had to write the BBL. Since then, bands also carry an 800, toll-free phone number for the hunter to call and report the band. This has increased the band reporting rate or percentage of banded birds taken and reported from about 33% to as high as 80% for ducks. This has significantly increased the efficiency of banding operations.

The recoveries provide a multitude of information including identifying migration routes, the distribution and derivation of harvest, correction factors for the composition of the harvest and survival and harvest rates. This latter information is used by USFWS within Adaptive Harvest Management models to aid in determining annual duck hunting regulations.