Summary: In response to congressional requests, GAO reviewed the Fish and Wildlife Service's (FWS) hunting regulations and cooperative management program for the Mississippi Valley Population of Canada geese (MVP), specifically the: (1) level of cooperation between the states in the Mississippi Flyway Council and FWS; (2) progress made in reaching the program's goal to increase MVP size; and (3) concern that hunters in the Council's southern states were not receiving an equitable share of the geese relative to the northern states.
FWS promulgates regulations each year limiting the number of waterfowl hunters can shoot and works with the Council to establish hunting regulations. The MVP improvement program: (1) restricts the harvesting of Canada geese to allow the flock to grow by 15 percent each year; (2) closed to hunting the area south of the 36th parallel; (3) sets harvest objectives for specific areas within states; and (4) relies on each state to apply the necessary harvest control methods, such as monitoring and season closure, to meet the agreed-upon limits. GAO found that: (1) since 1979, overall MVP harvest objectives have been exceeded by 295,000 geese, resulting in an MVP decline of 118,000; (2) overharvests persisted despite FWS and Council steps to shorten the hunting season and identify harvest objectives for specific areas; (3) FWS has been reluctant to take stronger regulatory action to ensure that the states adhere to their objectives because of the program's cooperative nature; (4) although the states have cooperated in feeding and refuge restrictions in order to increase southern migration, they have been less unified over harvest control and have not accepted the increasingly restrictive regulations limiting state harvests; and (5) state officials seem willing to reexamine harvest objectives if the planned annual goose population growth rate could be reduced below 15 percent, giving them more time to reach the program's goals and allowing them to increase annual harvest objectives.
