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The legal take of passage peregrines for falconry in the United States of America will occur within a short time of you receiving and reading this issue of the August Hawk Chalk. The regulations allowing the take are the result of 10 years of focused work done by a variety of NAFA leaders working in conjunction with the USFWS. This was a collaborative effort between the NAFA leadership and NAFA members, many who were responsible for most of the 2,000 positive responses which the Service received supporting the Passage EA. NAFA’s Conservation Committee has continued to work on this important topic with Flyway Councils and states.

Seems like every couple of weeks I hear about another state that has delisted peregrines or is allowing the take of peregrines for falconry. This is wonderful news and it is NAFA and NAFA members that are making this difference. My hat is off to everyone who is involved and working to make a positive difference for falconry and falconers. I know that the members of the THA have worked hard with the TP&W to get a take of passage tundra birds and you should be proud of your accomplishment. The THA is also to be commended for allowing non-resident take of passage peregrines into your regulations.

Here we are 35 years after American falconers lost the legal take of peregrines. Hopefully within 60 days of you reading this message, the first passage tundra peregrines from the North American arctic will be taken for falconry by American falconers! There is a very good chance that first bird will be from a beach in Texas. This is certainly cause for much celebration, whether you fly peregrines or even long wings or not. The historic symbolism of being able to again legally take peregrines after 1-1/2 generations is the result of perseverance, dedication, hard work, and understanding how politics works in the world. I’m glad that NAFA leaders over the past 35 years have understood how to make this happen, and worked diligently to make it so.

After a lot of hard, collaborative work, the NAFA Ethics Committee finished its revision of the NAFA Ethics Policy. As I continued to think about the NAFA Ethics Policy, I began to think about how and what falconers should be teaching their apprentices. The easier part is teaching an apprentice how to train a bird. As with all hunting sports, the harder part it to teach the ethics associated with falconry. It’s important to remember that there are multiple aspects to the ethics of falconry. One aspect is certainly to make sure that birds kept as falconry birds are flown regularly at game and their management is humane. Two other important aspects of falconry are fair chase and a strong land ethic, as espoused by Aldo Leopold, the father of American game management. Regarding a land ethic, in addition to the ethical imperative of treating the land with respect, there is also the practical component of the equation—without wild quarry to hunt, falconry disappears. There are many things that create the conditions for you to be able to have quarry to hunt. Jim Posewitz in his book, “Beyond Fair Chase – The Ethic and Tradition of Hunting,” summarized some key components of it well when he writes, “You have taken an animal in a hunt. It has come to you through the land and the trials of natural selection, through the efforts of people who protected your opportunity to hunt, through conservation programs that restored wildlife to a depleted land, through land management efforts that protected the place where you stand, through wildlife management programs that insure wildlife harvest is balanced with wildlife production, and through those people who taught you to hunt and hunt safely. The animal lying at your feet or resting in your hand contains all of these things. If anyone of them were missing or were to disappear, you would be standing alone and both your heart and your hand might be empty.”

Regarding the topic of fair chase, Posewitz makes the point that the public at large in America will not tolerate hunting unless the concept of fair chase is central to our hunting ethic. He wrote, “Although you and the animals you hunt are equally involved, only you—the hunter—can judge its fairness, and the choices you make are important because they reflect on hunting as an activity.” Over the years a number of falconers have pointed to the various phases that falconers go through over the years (similar to other hunters and fishermen) from defining their competence beginning with catching any wild quarry period, to then attempting to catch large quantities of quarry, to finally putting the quality of the flights and the hunt above the head count, this can be extended to fair chase. As we gain experience and advance in the phase we are at, we need to pass that knowledge and insight about ethical hunting on to the newer falconers. All of us are a work in progress as long as we live.

NAFA continues to work at the national and international level to protect the sport of falconry in many ways from drafting new regulations to working to stop or change bills such as HR 669 – the Non-native Invasive Species Protection Act. I personally have been actively participating in a national working group headed by the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council to change this bill. Membership in this working group includes the sport fishing industry, the pet industry, the aquaculture industry, and various state and federal agency representatives.

I hope any of you who are reading this and who are not yet a NAFA member, please consider applying for membership. Good luck on those south Texas beaches this fall!

Best regards to the THA,

Dan Cecchini, Jr., President
North American Falconers’ Association