Abstracts

Presented by Todd Arnold - Email: arnol065@umn.edu

In 1979, Cowardin and Johnson published a seminal paper entitled “Mathematics and Mallard Management”, in which they used existing data and simple population models to explore alternative options for harvest and habitat management. Forty years later, we have a wealth of additional data and increasingly sophisticated models and modeling tools, but still lack fundamental knowledge of what drives population dynamics of mallards and other duck species. In this symposium, we’ve critiqued some of the fundamental assumptions underlying adaptive harvest management models used to formulate harvest and habitat management decisions for mallards and other species, and also demonstrated some of the new tools and approaches that are available for better understanding population dynamics in these species. In this plenary, I begin the process of putting these pieces back together again in a way that might rectify recognized shortcomings in historical models, provide contemporary guidance for current decision makers, and lead to improved understanding of processes affecting waterfowl population dynamics for future efforts.