The primary objective is to provide guidance to conservation agencies and programs such as Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Louisiana Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Region 2 and 4 National Wildlife Refuges, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Migratory Bird Office Region 2 to focus banding activities (i.e., where and when) and minimum sample sizes necessary to meet harvest management objectives for mottled ducks. A secondary objective is to investigate alternate marking techniques (e.g., PIT tags, NANO tags) to supplement or replace assessments derived from band recoveries. The banding needs assessment will be a two part analysis. The first part will use multi-state simulation methods to identify minimum annual banding quantities by age and sex cohort. The second part of the framework then uses the total minimum banding quantity to allocate bands across the landscape. The resulting allocation should be the best design, or a design that results in the smallest variance weighted by the distribution of the population.
