large portion of the Mississippi flyway's 200,000 geese, 120,000 of which frequent the Horicon Marsh in Wisconsin.

I understand that the flock can tolerate a hunting harvest of up to 50,000; yet, it is reported that Federal authorities are considering a 14,000 State quota.

On the basis of all of the information I have received, both here in Washington and back in Wisconsin, I can see no reason why a State quota of up to 20,000 could not easily be established with no adverse effects to the flock.

Since statewide kill-count procedures have not gained the confidence of conservation officials, I would urge that the 1966 goose season in Wisconsin be established on the basis of a 14,000 quota for the Horicon quota area, and the continuation of the 70-day season-but with the one goose bag and possession limit adopted by the State this year in an effort to reduce the overall kill.

At the same time, I would strongly recommend that State and Federal officials immediately institute plans for the development of an accurate statewide kill-count procedure, to be implemented this year. I would also urge State and Federal officials to begin plans for the dispersal of the Horicon flock, maintaining the 50,000 capacity population at Horicon and creating new waterfowl areas around the State to attract the excess population.

I thank you for allowing me this time and again urge that you study the views expressed here today in a spirit of careful and deliberate consideration.

That concludes my remarks, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. DOWNING. Thank you very much, Congressman.

Mr. Pelly?

Mr. PELLY. Mr. Chairman, I applaud the theory, and I think it is the first time that I have ever heard before this committee about the theory of dispersing flocks in the interest of conservation. I think that rather than coming here and urging increasing or lowering kills, you have suggested that a proper balance be established in one locality and then to disperse the flocks in other refuge lands elsewhere. I think that has a lot of merit to it.

Mr. RACE. Thank you. I think it is a very good idea and would divide the hunting up in the State.

Mr. PELLY. As you know, this subcommittee is very much interested in extending the refuge lands to conserve our wildlife and your suggestion ties right in with the overall thoughts of this committee. Mr. RACE. I thank the gentleman for agreeing with me.

Mr. DOWNING. Mr. Reinecke?

Mr. REINECKE. Thank you.

I would like to welcome our colleague and thank him for a very interesting and informative statement.

Mr. DOWNING. Thank you very much.

Mr. RACE. Thank you.

Mr. DOWNING. Our next witness will be Mr. John S. Gottschalk, Director for Sport Fisheries and Wildlife, Department of the Interior. He will be accompanied by Mr. Walter Crissey, Director of the Migratory Bird Station at Laurel, Md., and Mr. A. T. Studholme, Chief, Division of Management Enforcement.

Do you have a statement?

STATEMENT OF JOHN S. GOTTSCHALK, DIRECTOR, BUREAU OF SPORT FISHERIES AND WILDLIFE; ACCOMPANIED BY WALTER CRISSEY, DIRECTOR, MIGRATORY BIRD POPULATIONS STATION, AND A. T. STUDHOLME, CHIEF, DIVISION OF MANAGEMENT ENFORCEMENT, BUREAU OF SPORT FISHERIES AND WILDLIFE, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

Mr. GOTTSCHALK. I do not have a prepared statement myself, Mr. Chairman, but when we consider the current status of waterfowl and the history and last year's regulations and general considerations of waterfowl regulations as a whole, Mr. Crissey will have a prepared statement which we would like to present to the committee and leave for the record.

Mr. DOWNING. You may proceed.

Mr. GOTTSCHALK. We are pleased to have this opportunity to present a short history of waterfowl regulation and waterfowl hunting in our country for the benefit of the committee in its consideration of the stewardship which our Bureau, through the Department of the Interior, provides for what we all recognize as one of America's great outdoor resources.

I would like to preface our testimony this morning by echoing the feeling of optimism which the chairman reported in his opening remarks. When we testified last year, it was our sad lot to report that the mallard population, for example, at that time was as low as it had been noted during the course of the survey work which we have been carrying out now for nearly two decades.

We anticipated regulations last year which were designed to return an increased number of birds to the breeding grounds to take advantage of what appeared to be improved breeding conditions in the essential prairie breeding areas of Canada, and to a lesser extent our own prairie States.

As a result, we established a target of a 20-percent reduction in kill last year and a consequent return of 10 percent more birds to the prairie nesting regions.

I will report this in general terms at this point because we are prepared to document our statements with the statistical material from our survey work in more detail.

I can report that nature has been extremely kind to waterfowl and also as a result to waterfowl hunters, and I might add indirectly to those of us who have the responsibility to recommend to the Secretary the regulations which will be in force this coming fall.

Water conditions last year, last winter, and this spring, have continued to remain the best they have been now for approximately 6 years. As a result of improved water conditions and as a result of a larger number of breeding birds which flew back to the potholes last spring, we started the breeding season in the best condition from the standpoint of the potential for breeding, although not for the number of breeding birds that we have had for a long time.

We all are aware of the fact that nature has the capability to respond, sometimes dramatically, to changes in the habitat and in the environment and, while it might not have been exactly a dramatic

response this year, there has certainly been a most gratifying response on the part of the birds.

The ratio of young produced to adult birds is higher this year than it has been at any point in the last 10 years. Now, this is not to suggest that we are approaching the conditions which prevailed historically at various times when we had several years of favorable water conditions.

It does take into consideration the fact that our data for the last 10 years include some of the poorest years in terms of production that we have ever experienced.

Nevertheless, our records indicate that the birds produced at the rate of 1.6 young per adult which is slightly better statistically than three young birds per pair of adult birds, and this is a truly gratifying situation and one which gives us leave to think in terms of more relaxed regulations than we have been able to recommend in past years.

I want to emphasize, of course, that my remarks are very general, covering the whole spectrum of waterfowl. You will find differences with respect to individual species, and in some cases with respect to different areas, but with that as a background, I would like to review for you just for a moment the procedures we follow and then, with your permission, to tell you the recommendations of my staff and where we stand in this regulationmaking process.

Our predictions of the fall flight of birds is dependent primarily upon two surveys carried out in the summer months. One is made in June and consists of a survey of breeding pairs of ducks. This is followed in July by a survey which shows the number of broods per pair of adults.

The first gives us a figure which can be related to the figures from previous years as to the population of adult birds. The second is the figure which gives us a factor which when multiplied by the number of adult birds gives us the anticipated total number of birds that would be available to start south in the fall.

Now, we get this information together as rapidly as we can and usually in the second week of August there are a series of waterfowl council meetings, one for each of the waterfowl flyways in the United States, and I might say Canada, because Canada has observers attending the respective waterfowl flyway council meetings.

At these meetings this year for the first time we presented the material which we had accumulated through these surveys with the recommendations of my staff. They were not the recommendations which I will make to the Secretary, but they were the recommendations of the staff in the Bureau to the councils for the types of regulations which we thought would achieve a continuation of our basic policy, to try to accommodate the greatest possible recreation but still put more birds back into the breeding grounds to take care of what we confidently expect will be another year of good water conditions in the prairie breeding grounds.

The councils met a week ago last Thursday and Friday. My staff came back to Washington last weekend. We worked on Saturday and Sunday reviewing the material they had obtained from the councils, and on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week the consolidated versions of the information that they had obtained from the council

groups and the last word which we had from our people was put together in the form of recommendations from the staff to me, and presented to the Waterfowl Advisory Committee, which has been holding its meeting the day before yesterday and yesterday.

Now, the purpose of the Waterfowl Advisory Committee meeting is to subject the technical recommendations of my staff, a group of men heading our various divisions which work with waterfowl, to the opinions of the State fish and game departments and of the private organizations who are working for our citizens in a nongovernmental way in the interest of waterfowl conservation.

The group includes all of the major national conservation organizations in addition to the representatives of the flyway councils.

This group tell me, with I would say a measure of candor, what they think of what we think, and there is a great exchange of ideas. We look upon this as a way to recognize what you might call social values of waterfowl shooting. It gives us the input from people who are on the one hand close to the hunters, and on the other hand close to the people who occupy a noncompensatory user status as far as waterfowl are concerned.

I refer, of course, to groups like the National Audubon Society, which is present at this meeting. It also includes representation from the major national organization composed almost exclusively of waterfowl hunters, and that is Ducks Unlimited.

I want to report that our cooperative working together with Ducks. Unlimited, I believe, has reached a new high of understanding, and I would like to commend that organization for the energy which they have displayed in trying to help solve the waterfowl problem by working in the place where the ducks are produced; namely, in Canada. It is a citizens' effort designed to put some of America's interest and wealth into a place where it cannot be done by the Government itself. It is truly an orgnaization of great importance in this field.

All of this has come now to the point where we have developed, and I say "we" in the sense of reflecting my staff recommendations, a series of proposed regulations which I am now considering, and from which I expect tomorrow to distill the essence and make a recommendation to the Secretary. He will have on his desk early in the week our formal recommendations for the 1966 waterfowl

season.

I don't know into how much detail you wish to go, Mr. Chairman. I am prepared to give you as much as you wish, but perhaps at this time you might like to hear Mr. Crissey's general statement about the probable character of the waterfowl flights this coming fall. Mr. DOWNING. I think that would be desirable.

Do you have any questions, gentlemen?

Mr. PELLY. I have a comment.

I thought that last year maybe we went into too much detail, that, if we could get a summary and then by questioning any details that seemed desirable would be brought out. I just thought we went on at great length last year, and it did not seem to serve any great purpose, so that my suggestion is the summary, and then the questions.

Mr. GOTTSCHALK. May I suggest, Mr. Chairman, then, that Mr. Crissey's material be made a matter of record.

Mr. DOWNING. That will be placed in the record at this point. (The material mentioned follows herewith:)

THE 1966 STATUS OF WATERFOWL BY THE MIGRATORY BIRD POPULATIONS STATION, LAUREL, MD.

INTRODUCTION

This year, in presenting the status of waterfowl, we must discuss not only the current situation but also attempt to place 1966 in proper perspective with past years. The management problem we must solve at this meeting is: "Where do we go from here and how do we get there?" A better understanding of where we have been during the past several years will help solve this problem.

You are all aware that the basic reason we have a problem is periodic wet and dry conditions in prairie and parkland pothole breeding habitat where most of the ducks shot by hunters are produced. As a direct result of these wet and dry periods the amount of suitable breeding habitat available to the birds changes drastically and there is an associated change in the rate at which ducklings are produced.

The history of waterfowl populations during the past several years can be illustrated by using the mallard as the example. In the first place, we have sufficient data only for the mallard to examine past history in any detail. Secondly, the mallard is the chief duck in both the United States and Canadian bag and there seems to be a fairly close correlation between mallard populations and those of many other ducks.

Table 1 lists our best estimate of the critical factors related to the population dynamics of mallards during the period 1955 through the first half of 1966. In column 1 are estimates of the total mallard breeding population in North America. These estimates are based on aerial survey observations on the breeding grounds adjusted for the portion of birds present that are not recorded by aerial crews as determined by comparing aerial observations with ground beat-outs.

Column 2 presents our best estimates of the mallard production ratio; that is, the ratio of immatures to adults in the fall flight. During recent years these data have been derived from the age ratio in the kill as measured by the duck wing survey adjusted for differences in vulnerability to the gun. This difference is measured by comparing the recovery rate of adults and immature banded immediately preseason. For earlier years, the age ratios were derived by indirect methods and adjusted with age ratios from bag check material collected by Hawkins and Bellrose.

Column 3 is the breeding population expanded by the production ratio and constitutes our best estimate for the total fall flight.

Column 4 is the U.S. bag plus crippling loss combined with the Canadian bag plus crippling loss. Crippling loss in both the United States and Canada is estimated to be 1 bird lost for each 3 birds bagged. Estimates of bag in Canada, where uniform kill surveys have not yet been conducted, are based on proportionate band recoveries between the United States and Canada. For example, if 50 percent of the band recoveries came from Canada and 50 percent from the United States, and if a million birds were killed in the United States, we would conclude that the Canadian kill also would approximate a million. Column 5 is percent of fall flight that is bagged and crippled.

Column 6 is the number of birds lost due to causes other than shooting and is obtained by subtracting bag and crippling loss and the breeding population of the following year from the estimated fall flight.

Column 7 is the estimated natural loss, expressed as a percent of fall flight. Column 8 is the sum of Columns 5 and 7 and represents our best estimate of total annual mortality measured from the beginning of one hunting season to the beginning of the next.

Table 1 suggests that some of our data are not precise. For example, it does not seem likely that mortality due to natural causes was as low as 7 percent in 1958 or as high as 27 percent in 1960. Probably the estimate of production