AHM?

[cajunwannabe]

Adaptive Harvest Management (AHM) has not been adaptive at all. It has been, quite literally, the exact opposite. The blue line on the chart below basically shows that amount opportunity given by a combination of the season length and the bag limit for each duck season since 1966. The black dots and the black curve show actual harvest for the same periods.

AHM started in 1995. Notice that the waterfowl managers prior to 1995, were very effective at using season and limits to manage harvest rates in response to changes in waterfowl populations.

But, once AHM started, again in 1995, as the flat section highlighted by the red circle shows, season and limits haven't changed once. This "Adaptive" method has refused to adjust to lower duck numbers as indicated by the drop in harvest rates since 2000.

It doesn't take an expert in trend analysis to understand that harvest rates (black line) are going to continue to drop unless someone grows enough backbone to lower the opportunity (blue line).

I'm curious, RH, how does this graph look for the other 3 flyways?

[Rubberhead*]

I'm curious, RH, how does this graph look for the other 3 flyways?

They're a little different but all four flyways have had their version of the Liberal season since 1995 and all four flyways have experienced a drop off of their harvest rate since 2000...