Six Manitoba hunters and wildlife experts have grouped together to voice their opposition to proposed hunting seasons for two migratory birds in Manitoba, and they’re asking other concerned members of the public to join them.

Environment and Climate Change Canada recently suggested hunting seasons for tundra swans and mourning doves across the Prairies in proposed amendments to Canadian migratory bird regulations.

If passed, a tundra swan hunting season could begin in Manitoba as soon as 2028, with 400 permits issued to hunters in the province each year, the proposed amendments say.

But some have raised concerns that tundra swan hunters might accidentally target trumpeter swans, a sensitive species that can’t be hunted anywhere in North America.

Those concerns have led a group of six wildlife veterans and hunters from across Manitoba — James Duncan, Murray Gillespie, Doug Langrell, Ted Muir, Barry Verbiwski and Robert Wrigley — to join forces to oppose the proposals.

Ted Muir, a waterfowl hunter and a former wildlife educator with the provincial government, says the two swans are nearly identical, apart from their size.

“The fear is that they will mix in with the tundra swans, which are smaller but almost impossible to distinguish between the two during the hunting season,” he told CBC News on Monday.

“It’s counterproductive, it’s unnecessary and it’s unwarranted — it’s just completely wrong.”

Muir says trumpeter swans used to populate much of central Canada and northwestern parts of the United States before they were decimated by the fur trade, during which their feathers and skins were prized as they could be made into clothing and quills.

The swans’ population numbers have grown thanks to legal protections in Canada and the U.S. for over a century, and they’ve begun to colonize parts of Manitoba in the last decade, he said.

The Canadian Wildlife Service, a branch of Environment and Climate Change Canada, previously told CBC News that if 400 tundra swan hunting permits were issued in Manitoba each year, about three trumpeter swans are estimated to be accidentally killed.

But it’s up to hunters to be able to distinguish between the two swans, the wildlife service said.

For Muir, that’s a high risk not worth taking, and he believes hunters “absolutely will not be able to make those distinctions.”

“Most people won’t know the difference until the bird is on the ground and it’s too late.”

Muir says his group is not taking a stance against hunting in Manitoba, and they don’t want to hurt lodge and outfitter businesses in the province, but they feel the public “needs to take a stand on this.”

“It’s just good old common sense and heartfelt concerns,” he said.

“We would like folks who are on side with our feelings … to write the politicians, because this will become, probably, a political issue.”

Manitoba Natural Resources Minister Ian Bushie says the federal government’s proposals are in their early stages and no definite decisions have been made.

He says the province encourages more Manitobans to share their views during the consultation process so that the federal government can make an “informed decision.”

The Manitoba Wildlife Federation, a conservation organization representing 15,000 hunters in the province, says it’s committed to protect and expand licensed hunting opportunities for Manitobans to harvest wildlife resources sustainably.

While it recognizes decisions about when and what to hunt are “deeply personal,” the wildlife federation said in a statement Monday that it supports “the creation of opportunities for individuals to enjoy our outdoor heritage responsibly and sustainably.”

CBC News has reached out to Environment and Climate Change Canada for comment.

Mourning doves ‘a songbird’

James Duncan, a white-tailed deer hunter and retired director of Manitoba’s wildlife and fisheries branch, says he questions the value of introducing the proposed hunting seasons.

“I’m just questioning, you know, the ability of anyone — hunters or non-hunters — to rapidly make a decision that might result in bycatch or mistaken identity,” he told CBC News on Monday.

Duncan says the group also worries that the proposed hunting seasons will hurt the public’s perception of hunters.

For mourning doves, the federal government is proposing a daily limit of 15 mourning doves and a possession limit of 45 doves in the three Prairie provinces.

The doves are one of the largest populations of game birds in Canada and North America, with over 2.3 million recorded in Manitoba last fall, according to the Canadian Wildlife Service.

“But if you ask the average person, they would consider it a songbird,” Duncan said. “Whether you live in the rural areas, whether you live in the city, this is a bird that comes to the feeder that people admire and enjoy for its own merit.”

Duncan says there are bigger fish to fry when it comes to managing Canada’s migratory birds, as a 2024 report found 36 per cent of the country’s bird species have declined since 1970.

“There’s a whole host of species that are either at risk, or are may be at risk, if we knew more about them, and the leading causes [are] habitat degradation or destruction.”

Even without the tundra swan and mourning dove hunts, Muir says there are plenty of opportunities to hunt migratory birds in Manitoba and beyond.

“We have a healthy population of ducks and geese in this province, in this country, primarily because waterfowl hunters open their wallets and invest huge amounts of money in saving the habitats.”