Divsion of Migratory Bird Management - Information Quality and Peer Review

In order to improve the quality and credibility of the scientific information we use to make regulatory decisions, the Fish and Wildlife Service has implemented a formal "peer review" process for influential scientific documents.

While we have always consulted experts to ensure that our decisions are based on sound science, through this peer review process we follow the guidelines for Federal agencies spelled out in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) "Final Information Quality Bulletin for Peer Review," (PDF, 263 KB) released December 16, 2004.

Promulgation of annual hunting regulations by the Service relies on a well-defined process of monitoring data collection and scientific assessment. At key points during that process, Flyway technical committees, Flyway Councils (State agencies), consultants, and the public (and in some instances international regulatory agencies) review and provide valuable input on technical assessments or other documents related to proposed regulatory decisions. All assessments pertaining to the setting of annual harvest regulations are deemed “highly influential,” however they are exempted (see waiver below) from strict application of IQA peer-review guidelines due to the compressed time schedule associated with the regulatory process. Therefore, peer-review plans for technical assessments which influence annual hunting regulations decisions will not be posted on this page. While assessments influential to annual regulatory decision-making are covered under the general waiver, the DMBM has a long-history of subjecting applicable portions of such technical assessments to formal peer-review through submission to scientific journals, or other means, in addition to the review and scrutiny received as part of the annual regulatory process. All other regulatory and non-regulatory technical reports are subject to IQA peer-review guidelines and will have peer-review plans posted here.

Part of the peer review process is to provide information on the Web about how each peer review is to be conducted, as described in this checklist.

We have identified the following documents and are in the process of developing peer review plans to meet OMB requirements.

Date Posted	Document Title
12/15/05	Annual Migratory Bird Hunting Regulations Waiver
10/04/06	Estimating abundance of offshore, wintering sea ducks using adaptive 2-phase sampling.
10/04/06	Evaluation of scaup breeding population estimates.
10/04/06	Effect of survey operating procedures changes on scaup breeding population estimates.
10/04/06	Evaluation of ground-based duck production surveys.
10/04/06	Modeling heterogeneity in mallard band reporting rates.
10/04/06	Comparison of wood duck and mallard band reporting rates in eastern North America.
10/04/06	Comparison of black duck and mallard band reporting rates in eastern North America.
10/04/06	Modeling Atlantic brant productivity.
10/04/06	Migratory Bird Abundance and Surveys in the Central Canadian Arctic.
10/04/06	Comparison of Detection Probability of waterbirds in tundra habitats from fixed- and rotary-winged aircraft.
04/19/07	Plasma Metabolites and Migration Physiology of Semipalmated Sandpipers: Refueling Performance at Five Latitudes
04/25/07	Reporting and harvest rates for North American geese: assessing spatial variability and the influence of various dollar values.
04/25/07	Temporal patterns of legband retention in North American geese.
06/18/07	Monitoring in the context of structured decision making and adaptive management
06/18/07	Replicated Point Counts for Estimating Detection Rate and Abundance of Florida Scrub-Jays
11/04/07	Assessing allowable take of migratory birds: black vultures in Virginia
11/04/07	A double-observer approach to estimating detection rates in aerial waterfowl surveys
11/04/07	Annual Survival of Double-crested Cormorants from the Great Lakes, 1979- 2006
03/18/08	Stopover duration analysis with departure probability dependent on unknown time since arrival
04/08/08	Estimating abundance of Aleutian cackling geese using Pollock’s robust design models
10/09/08	Estimating Migratory Game Bird Recruitment by Integrating Age Ratio and Banding Data
01/04/09	Predicting Wood Duck Harvest Rates in Eastern North America

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Peer Review of Scientific Information