Assessing red deer hunting management in the Iberian Peninsula: the importance of longitudinal studies

Abstract

Understanding the dynamics of a wildlife population in relation to hunting strategies is essential to achieve sustainable management. We used monitoring data over 25 years from two red deer (Cervus elaphus) populations with different management (with and without supplemental feeding) in South Central Spain to: (i) characterise the density dependence of population dynamics under contrasted management, and (ii) provide the basis for sustainable extraction by considering the theoretical maximum sustainable yield (MSYt) as the reference. The red deer population displayed a typical management reactive culling approach (‘saw-tooth-like’ curves), with occasional strong annual harvests but not occurring on a regular basis. Interestingly, we found reduced population growth at high densities in both populations, indicating that density-mediated factors determined population growth even when artificial feeding was provided. However, no effects of sex not age class of the extracted population on the population growth rate were determined. The total number of animals hunted was only slightly above those predicted by MSYt (i.e. K50%) in both populations, despite high densities close to theoretical K, being consistent throughout the study period. The extraction rates (30.3 and 34.0%, for supplemented and unsupplemented populations, respectively) were 13.3% and 10.2% lower compared to the MSYt situation in the unsupplemented and supplemented populations, respectively. Long term population monitoring data provided feasible and suitable baseline values to optimise the sustainable exploitation of red deer populations in the Mediterranean ecosystem under these contrasting management scenarios. Adaptive management, involving objective-driven decision making informed by data on red deer population dynamic, can contribute (i) to maximising the total extraction over the long term while (ii) reducing the ecological impact of high population densities.

Complementary roles of wild boar and red deer to animal tuberculosis maintenance in multi-host communities

“…The presence of a perimetral > 2 m-high fence constraining the movements of wild ungulates is a reliable proxy for the intensive management of their populations as game species, which is a well-known risk factor for TB (Santos et al, 2018;Camargo et al, 2021). Cattle herd TB prevalence was extracted at the smallest geographical unit available (county in Portugal; 'comarca ganadera' in Spain) as the average of 2016 and 2019 Portuguese data (DGAV, 2017) and 2018-2019 Spanish data (MAPAMA, 2020).…”

“…Data on the average number of animals harvested each year was obtained for most study sites (n = 25) (Table S2). The P harv parameter was estimated as a distribution incorporating variability and uncertainty, from published data for the Iberian Peninsula: one wild boar population studied by telemetry in Montes de Toledo, Spain (Barasona et al, 2016); and data from 25 red deer populations (Torres-Porras et al, 2014), plus two other populations (Camargo et al, 2021), all from Spain (Table S1). The uncertainty and variability in the P harv estimates extracted from these references were incorporated as PERT distributions with mode=estimated proportion of the population harvested each year, minimum and maximum= ± 2 standard deviations from the mode (Vose, 2008).…”

Ungulates mitigate the effects of drought and shrub encroachment on the fire hazard of Mediterranean oak woodlands

“…More recently, in 2015, overall deer densities surpassed one deer per hectare (M. N. Bugalho & X. Lecomte, unpublished data). Such deer densities are not uncommon in the Iberian Peninsula (Camargo et al, 2021).…”

Disentangling the effects of supplementary feeding on population abundance and the aggregation of wild ungulates as drivers of the prevalence of tuberculosis in south-central Spain

“…For example, on agricultural lands, its main objective is to protect crops (Geisser & Reyer 2004), whereas in protected areas it is focused on avoiding damage to forests and ensuring biodiversity conservation and individuals' survival during limiting seasons (Miranda et al 2015). On hunting estates, however, supplementary feeding is carried out to increase population productivity, survival, density and/or trophy quality (Putman & Staines 2004;Rodriguez-Hidalgo et al 2010;Milner et al 2014;Carpio et al 2021). The nal goal of supplementary feeding is to bene t wildlife and minimize human-wildlife con icts, but its use is controversial (Brown & Cooper 2006;Milner et al 2014) because it may have negative ecological effects (Boutin 1990;Oro et al 2013).…”