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The Study Plan, 2002
We have been using satellite telemetry (satellite transmitters are called Platform Transmitter Terminals or PTTs) and field studies to track pintails during spring migration north from California's Central Valley. We are attempting to delineate migration routes, locate critical spring rest areas, identify nesting regions relative to wetland conditions on the prairies of Canada and the United States, determine the proportion of nesting pintails that annually are unaccounted for by the May Population and Habitat Survey conducted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Canadian Wildlife Service in North America, and document the proportion of migrants that are annually exposed to lakes with perennial avian botulism. Beginning in spring 2002, we added samples of pintails marked with PTTs in Texas and New Mexico. The overall project resulted from a research proposal written by wildlife biologists of the Western Ecological Research Center's Dixon and San Francisco Bay Field Stations (U.S. Geological Survey, Biological Resources Division). Ducks Unlimited, Inc. and Ducks Unlimited Canada obtained funding for the project from the Tuscany Research Institute. Tuscany's grants over four years totaled $1million awarded to DU and up to $200K awarded to the California Waterfowl Association. Texas Parks and Wildlife and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Southwest Region 2, has provided the funds necessary to incorporate the Texas and New Mexico work.

Objectives:

  1. Determine proportionate use of spring migration corridors, spring staging areas, nesting areas, and postnesting areas of pintails migrating north from the Central Valley of California, Playa region and Gulf Coast of Texas, and central New Mexico, years 2002-03.
  2. Estimate efficiency of the May Survey strata to account for pintails migrating from the Central Valley of California, Playa region and Gulf Coast of Texas, and central New Mexico, by estimating proportionate distribution of PTT-marked pintails between surveyed and unsurveyed regions during the period of the May Survey, years 2002-03.
  3. Describe habitat use characteristics in southern Oregon and northeastern California, of pintails migrating from the Central Valley of California, years 2002-03.

TRI DU CWA USFWS CDFG TPW PLJV

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