For more than a century, the Bird Banding Laboratory has placed small metallic bands on the legs of birds across North America. Each year, the lab receives thousands of reports from bird watchers and biologists who spot the markers on the birds and report them to the lab. In this way, the lab tracks and monitors the movements and numbers of birds, from sparrows to sparrow hawks.
At a moment when bird populations are declining globally, banding is essential for conserving species and tracking population changes over time. It is also integral in setting regulations and limits for waterfowl hunting. Indeed, no group reports more bird bands — or prizes them more — than hunters.
“It’s the trophy of trophies for a hunter,” said Rusty Creasey, a duck hunter from Arkansas.
The trophy may not last. The lab falls under the U. S. Geological Survey’s Ecosystem Mission Area, the agency’s major ecology program, which under President Trump’s 2026 proposed budget would see funding reduced to $29 million, from $293 million. Many hunters are unhappy at the prospect.
“I just hate the thought of losing that,” said Eric Patterson, a duck hunter based in Alabama. “It is an extreme measure to take.”
Mark Lindberg, a wildlife biologist who worked for the University of Alaska Fairbanks for 20 years, said that the cuts would have a lasting effect. “We’re going to go from being the most refined waterfowl harvest management system in the world — no comparison — to one of the least informed,” he said. Dr. Lindberg is also a hunter.
Each band reported by hunters is essential for detecting changes in waterfowl populations and for setting hunting regulations. In its contribution to waterfowl management, the Bird Banding Laboratory “has given us something that is the envy of the world,” Ramsey Russell, a duck hunter in Mississippi, said.
Capturing and handling live birds is prohibited by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, so the lab is also responsible for issuing permits to researchers and bird banders in the United States. The lab has a field station in Patuxent Research Refuge in Maryland, and maintains a database of the millions of bands that have been placed on birds for more than a century, including how many times scientists and hunters have encountered an individual bird.
“Reporting of bird banding from hunters is one of the best citizen science programs that is out there,” said Brad Bortner, a retired wildlife biologist who worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for 30 years and was its chief of migratory bird management.
Bird banding aids the management of bird species. When researchers place a band on a bird’s leg, they also record information, including the animal’s sex and age, and even measurements like weight or data drawn from tissue and blood samples. The data helps scientists track and understand a species’ movements, habitat preferences, population growth and more.
In turn, whenever a hunter, biologist or other finders recover a band, they report it to the Bird Banding Lab, and that information is used to calculate the survival rate of the species. That data, along with surveys and hunting information from the previous year, informs the harvest management for ducks.
“We’re not just killers,” Mr. Creasey said. “We genuinely care about the resource and want it to thrive.”
The mathematical models behind duck regulations require that bands be placed on these animals every year, to guide the harvesting figures. “If you skip it, you basically have no data out there,” Mr. Bortner said. “And it causes real complications.”
Hunters treasure the bands they find, often placing them on lanyards and wearing them around the neck. Truck windows have been smashed to steal bird band lanyards. “They do have a very intrinsic value, just personal value, to hunters, which is why the citizen science model works,” Mr. Russell said.
Typically when hunters report a band, they receive a certificate with information about the specific bird killed. A band can reveal the complex narrative of a bird’s migratory journey. Many hunters “get a kick out of seeing where the bird came from,” Mr. Patterson said.
Many birds migrate between Canada and South America every year. To coordinate all of the data, the Bird Banding Laboratory works with the Bird Banding Office in Canada — which could be crippled if the American lab is defunded, said Chris Nicolai, a waterfowl scientist at Delta Waterfowl, a duck conservation nonprofit.
Dr. Nicolai noted that a significant portion of band data is collected, for free, by hunters, who also buy duck stamps to legally hunt waterfowl. The stamps, in turn, support habitat conservation.
“Hunters are paying for this information in several forms and then acting as scientists by collecting data for the information they paid for,” Dr. Lindberg said. “It’s a neat system that I really don’t understand the criticism of.”
A spokesman for the Department of the Interior, which manages the U.S. Geological Survey, declined to comment directly on the cuts to the lab.
Congress must still approve the proposed budget. Bird organizations, including the American Bird Conservancy and the Ornithological Council, have expressed concern about the closure of the lab, as banding is also important in monitoring raptors, seabirds, songbirds and other birds. Through banding, researchers have kept tabs on the oldest wild bird in the world, a female albatross named Wisdom, whose band number is “Z333.”
For Mr. Bortner, the lab’s uniqueness has made it vital. “It’s the only one,” he said.
Alexa Robles-Gil is a science reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.
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