Anderson: Whacking a century-old federal bird banding program would be wacky

Whose ox is getting gored by federal budget cuts is a hot topic these days, and compared with people who will lose their health insurance or jobs, duck hunters are in pretty good shape.

Mallards and other ducks likely will be fewer this fall than in recent years due to drought on U.S. and Canadian prairies. But a hunting season will indeed be held, and good times will pass in blinds up and down the Mississippi Flyway.

Still, trouble is afoot for wingshooters — and for ducks.

That’s because President Donald Trump’s 2026 budget suggests that the Bird Banding Lab, managed by the U.S. Geological Survey Ecosystems Mission Area, will close or be severely curtailed.

In existence for more than 100 years, the lab represents the cornerstone of waterfowl science, and duck and goose managers will be flying blind without the migration, habitat and other insights gained from bands affixed to ducks’ legs.

Congress will write its own budget, with a deadline of Sept. 30, and might modify the president’s proposed cuts. But Trump is on a winning streak with Washington lawmakers, and if they agree to chop the Ecosystems Mission Area budget from $293 million to just $29 million, as Trump proposes, the centurylong run of the world’s most comprehensive bird banding program could end.

“Banding returns are the most important piece of data we have in waterfowl management,” said Todd Arnold, a University of Minnesota professor of waterfowl ecology and management.

Unseen by most Minnesotans, Department of Natural Resources banding teams fan out in northern and northwestern Minnesota each spring and early summer, when ducks molt, or grow new feathers, and are unable to fly.

Similar teams organized by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or state wildlife agencies are assigned to the Dakotas, prairie Canada and elsewhere in North America, including Alaska.

Armed with small metal bands stamped with identifying numbers, the crews capture ducks of various species — but mostly mallards — and affix the bands around the birds’ legs. Before a bird is released, its weight and sex are recorded, along with its age, and in some cases, it’s tested for bird flu.

In Minnesota and elsewhere, Canada geese, woodcock and mourning doves also are banded, and some researchers band songbirds.

All banding is overseen by the Bird Banding Lab, which keeps track of millions of bands placed on birds and whether and how they’re recovered.

In some instances, ducks and other birds survive multiple years and are recaptured by northern banding crews. Hunters who shoot banded ducks or other game birds while migrating can learn their origins and ages by reporting band numbers to the lab.

Many waterfowlers consider the bands to be trophies and in some instances hang them from call lanyards to show off their prowess in the field.

“If we lose banding data, we would lose important information about harvest rates of individual duck species,” said Dave Rave of Bemidji, a retired DNR research biologist and wildlife manager. “We also would lose information about what ducks are being shot, whether adult or juvenile, male or female. We’d have to guess at harvest rates of adult female ducks, which is important to know because we have to protect females for breeding.”

To maintain the program’s statistical validity, a sample of ducks must be banded each year, Rave said.

The possible closing of the banding program frustrates waterfowlers and birders, as well as researchers and managers. But the Bird Banding Lab isn’t the primary object of the proposed cutbacks.

Instead, the Ecosystems Mission Area, which houses the banding lab, is being targeted in part because it sometimes conducts global warming research, which critics say can impede economic growth, particularly in the western U.S.

More accurately, most of the research benefits land, water, wildlife — and people.

One study, for example, posted recently on the Ecosystems Mission Area website is titled “Unintended indirect effects limit elk productivity from supplemental feeding in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.”

Another study is headlined “USGS ecosystems science strengthening America’s hunting and fishing heritage.”

Bottom line: The idea that somehow natural resource science should be defunded because it acknowledges the reality of an ever-evolving world, including a changing climate, is wacky.

Even wackier is the possibility that the nation’s 100-year-old bird banding program could be disbanded as a result.

“Banding is absolutely essential to understanding survival rates and populations of waterfowl,” said Dave Trauba, DNR wildlife section chief. “It’s how we came to understand migration and how migrations change over time.”

Former North Dakota governor and current Interior Secretary Doug Burgum oversees the Geological Survey and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He’s a self-described lifelong hunter and gun owner, and has said his mother especially loved duck and pheasant hunting.

Maybe he can keep the Bird Banding Lab running.

Donald Trump Jr. and his brother Eric also are possibilities. They’ve gone quiet about hunting lately. But in the run-up to their dad’s 2016 election, they often touted their hunting and conservation bona fides.

“You can be assured that if I’m not directly involved (in the administration’s hunting and conservation management), I’m going to be that very, very loud voice in (his father’s) ear,” Trump Jr. said. “Between my brother and myself, no one understands the issues better than us. No one in politics lives the lifestyle more than us.”

We’ll see.