Assessing the efficacy of aerial culling of introduced wild deer in New Zealand with analytical decomposition of predation risk

Latham, M. Cecilia; Herries, Dan; Barron, M. C.; Cruz, Jennyffer; Anderson, Dean P.

doi:10.1007/s10530-017-1531-0

Cited by 16 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…The effects of management (sustained aerial control and WAROs) were less clear. We emphasise that the monitoring is for all ungulates present on PCL (Table 1) The lower ungulate occupancy rates and conditional abundances at non-woody sites likely reflects the greater vulnerability of ungulates on New Zealand's PCL to helicopterbased shooting in these habitats (deer: Challies 1977;Latham et al 2018;Himalayan tahr: Tustin & Challies 1978). Related to this, commercial harvesting of red deer is currently more economically viable in non-woody habitats (Warburton et al 2018).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Occupancy and relative abundances of introduced ungulates on New Zealand’s public conservation land 2012–2018

Moloney¹,

Forsyth²,

Ramsey³

et al. 2021

NZJE

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Introduced ungulates are an important management issue on New Zealand's public conservation land (PCL). Ungulates are harvested by recreational and commercial hunters, with some government-funded culling. A robust monitoring system is needed to reliably report trends in occupancy and abundance, and to evaluate management effectiveness. We first describe the design and implementation of a monitoring programme enabling ungulate occupancy and relative abundances to be estimated on New Zealand's PCL. Monitoring sites are located at the vertices of an 8-km grid superimposed over PCL on North, South and Stewart/Rakiura islands (i.e. a spatially representative sampling network). At each site, intact ungulate pellets are counted on four transects radiating from a 400 m 2 vegetation plot, with each 150 m transect containing 30 1-m radius plots. We next report an analysis of the first such data collected at 1346 sites during 2012-2018. Nationally, ungulate occupancy and abundance were higher at woody than at non-woody sites, and overall were higher in the North Island than in the South Island. Occupancy odds increased by 34% and 21% per annum in the North Island and South Island, respectively. Abundance (conditional on sites being occupied) increased 11% annually in the North Island, but did not change in the South Island. These increases in occupancy and abundance indicate that ungulate populations are recovering from the lows of the 1980s, likely due to reduction in both commercial harvesting and government-funded control. The data from the monitoring reported here establish a baseline against which future estimates of ungulate occupancy-abundance, and the effectiveness of management activities, can be assessed. Five-yearly remeasurements at the sites, coupled with more comprehensive recording of information on government control and commercial/recreational harvesting activities, should enable the drivers of future changes in ungulate occupancy and abundance to be better understood.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Occupancy and relative abundances of introduced ungulates on New Zealand’s public conservation land 2012–2018

Moloney¹,

Forsyth²,

Ramsey³

et al. 2021

NZJE

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“…Macropods that are culled in non-commercial shooting programs often have their carcasses left intact (Gowans et al 2010;Morgan and Pegler 2010) and in situ as per standard practice in 'culling-to-waste' shooting programs ( Fig. 3b, d; Pauli and Buskirk 2007;Latham et al 2017). Macropods shot for commercial use are typically 'dressed' at their point of harvest.…”

Section: Commercial Macropod Harvestingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, several factors contribute to the risk that helicopter shooting with Pb-based bullets may pose to scavenging wildlife. First, animals shot from helicopters are not harvested or otherwise processed by operators (culling-to-waste; Latham et al 2017), leaving whole animals available to scavengers. Second, repeat shooting is common practice with helicopter shooting, meaning that two or more bullets are routinely fired into animals (mean of 2.4 bullet wounds for feral camels and feral horses; Hampton et al 2014b, The images were captured in the same way as described by Legagneux et al (2014), namely by placing camera traps on the carcasses of shot animals (Forsyth et al 2014).…”

Section: Helicopter Shootingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Heads in the sand: public health and ecological risks of lead-based bullets for wildlife shooting in Australia

et al. 2018

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Lead (Pb) is a toxic element banned from fuel, paint and many other products in most developed countries. Nonetheless, it is still widely used in ammunition, including rifle bullets, and Pb-based bullets are almost universally used in Australia. For decades, poisoning from Pb shot (shotguns) has been recognised as a cause of disease in waterfowl and Pb shot has been subsequently banned for waterfowl hunting in many jurisdictions. However, the risks posed by Pb-based bullets (rifles) have not been similarly recognised in Australia. Pb-based rifle bullets frequently fragment, contaminating the tissue of shot animals. Consuming this Pb-contaminated tissue risks harmful Pb exposure and, thus, the health of wildlife scavengers (carrion eaters) and humans and their companion animals who consume harvested meat (game eaters). In Europe, North America and elsewhere, the environmental and human health risks of Pb-based bullets are widely recognised, and non-toxic alternatives (e.g. copper-based bullets) are increasingly being used. However, Australia has no comparable research despite widespread use of shooting, common scavenging by potentially susceptible wildlife species, and people regularly consuming shot meat. We conclude that Australia has its collective 'head in the sand' on this pressing worldwide One Health issue. We present the need for urgent research into this field in Australia.

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“…For the three mobile survey methods, we estimated the probability of detection as P(detection| presence) = P(Detection + |Presence + , Search + ) using data collected concurrently from GPS-collared wallabies and survey paths (as per methodology in Latham et al 2018). P(detection|presence) represents the probability of detecting a collared wallaby given that the animal was at a point location within the field of view of the observer when the observer searched the area.…”

Section: Identifying Detections Of Collared Wallabiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The probability of detecting an animal using a given surveillance method can be affected by the habitat where the animal occurs. For example, some habitats with dense vegetation offer more opportunities for concealment thereby reducing detectability (Caughley 1977, Green et al 2013, Latham et al 2018. Collecting data on the detection probabilities of different methods when used in different habitats enables correction factors for habitat biases to be applied (Samuel et al 1987, Green et al 2013.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detection probabilities and surveillance sensitivities for managing an invasive mammalian herbivore

et al. 2021

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Assessing the efficacy of aerial culling of introduced wild deer in New Zealand with analytical decomposition of predation risk

Cited by 16 publications

References 42 publications

Occupancy and relative abundances of introduced ungulates on New Zealand’s public conservation land 2012–2018

Occupancy and relative abundances of introduced ungulates on New Zealand’s public conservation land 2012–2018

Heads in the sand: public health and ecological risks of lead-based bullets for wildlife shooting in Australia

Detection probabilities and surveillance sensitivities for managing an invasive mammalian herbivore

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