Editors' Page

Each spring they take to the air making their way north toward the nesting grounds. If you think we're talking about birds, you'd be wrong. We're referring to the 12 men and 2 women U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) biologist/pilots, and their right-seat observers, who conduct the annual waterfowl breeding population and production surveys in Canada and the United States.

While we have no proof, we're convinced these pilots wear a T-shirt emblazoned with a giant, red "S" beneath their flight suits. What they do for one month in the spring and one month in the summer borders on the superhuman.

Using global positioning technology, these pilots fly single- or multi-engine, fixed-wing aircraft along 80,000 miles of remote transects (point-to-point distances systematically laid out across the terrain) at an altitude of 150 feet—that's hazardous-duty, low-level flying across 2.2 million square miles. As if it weren't enough to maintain altitude, stay on transect, look for obstructions, manage fuel, deal with equipment failures, and stay ahead of weather conditions, the pilots also voice-record the number and kinds of waterfowl seen within one-eighth mile from their side of the plane, while the right-seat observers count birds within the same distance on the other side of the plane.

In Canada, before getting in the air, coordination is the name of the game. The Service pilots coordinate their flight schedules with Canadian Ministry of Natural Resources helicopter pilots and with Canadian Wildlife Service ground crews, both of whom subsample areas covered by the fixed-wing surveys to correct for visibility bias. For those transects located in the United States, many state agency biologists accompany Service pilots as right-seat observers or work in ground crews with Service biologists.

After a maximum allowable 8 hours of flying each day, you would think they could rest, but it's back to the motel, bunkhouse, or tent to transcribe voice recordings into a digital database, always error checking the data collection and entry. All this information, ultimately, is converted into framework regulations from which states and provinces set their annual waterfowl harvest regulations.

You probably wouldn't have guessed that it took an effort like this in the spring and summer for us to be able to feature a duck on the front cover and a hunter with his dog on the back cover of Birdscapes' fall issue. If we didn't have migratory bird treaties and this international partnership conducting waterfowl population and production surveys, a part of our fall heritage—waterfowl hunting—would be history, and if we didn't have partnerships conserving the habitats that waterfowl depend upon, well, you don't even want to think about that.