Releasing of pheasants for shooting in the UK alters woodland invertebrate communities

Neumann, Jessica; Holloway, Graham J.; Sage, Rufus B.; Hoodless, Andrew N.

doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2015.06.022

Cited by 16 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Although release of game birds and their subsequent shooting can stimulate significant environmental management that benefits a wider range of species and habitats (Mustin et al 2018), release of game birds, especially at high numbers/ densities, can also contribute to environmental damage. This includes adverse modification of woodland ground flora and fauna within their immediate release pens (Neumann et al 2015;Sage et al 2005) and impacts on the broader environment (Callegari et al 2014;Sage et al 2009). Finally, the waste of so many birds also raises ethical questions, especially when eggs are produced and young birds reared in unnatural commercial conditions before being released to face natural perils such as starvation or predation (Matheson et al 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why do many pheasants released in the UK die, and how can we best reduce their natural mortality?

2018

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Around 60% of pheasants released for shooting in the UK, an estimated 21 million birds, do not end up at their intended fate: being shot. This constitutes wastage, raising economic, environmental and ethical questions. We review what is known of the fates of released pheasants and consider why they do not directly contribute to the numbers harvested. We focus on four main explanations: predation, disease, starvation and dispersal, and highlight other important causes of mortality. For each explanation, we attempt to attribute levels of loss and identify timings or conditions when such losses may be heaviest. We review factors that exacerbate losses and methods available to mitigate them. Opportunities for amelioration may arise at all stages of the rearing and release of pheasants and involve changes to the conditions under which eggs are produced, the way young pheasants are reared or the management of the environment into which they are released. We found few studies investigating impacts of post-release management techniques on pheasant survival outside of the breeding season within a UK context. We found that a number of less commonly deployed practices focusing on early-life, pre-release management may improve survival. Given the scale of pheasant releasing in the UK, even improvements in survival of 1% would mean that~350,000 fewer birds die of natural causes. Complementing current post-release management with proven novel pre-release management interventions could reduce the number of pheasants required for release, whilst maintaining current shooting levels. Lowering release numbers would lower financial costs, benefit the environment and reduce some ethical concerns over the release and shooting of reared pheasants.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why do many pheasants released in the UK die, and how can we best reduce their natural mortality?

2018

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“…The numbers alone suggest the likelihood of strong effects of direct competition on other seed and invertebrate consumers, as well as the likely effects of consumption on the plant and animal species being consumed. Areas of woodland with pheasant rearing pens and releases have different vegetation, invertebrate and bird population compositions to control areas, notably with reduced occurrence of large-bodied beetles at high pheasant release densities (Neumann et al 2015), more individual warblers and woodpigeons (though not more species overall) and denser field layer vegetation (Draycott et al 2008). Nearby hedges tend to be associated with more bare ground and weedy species and fewer perennial species and shrub and tree seedlings (Sage et al 2009).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Abundance, biomass and energy use of native and alien breeding birds in Britain

Blackburn

Gaston

2018

Biol Invasions

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We quantify the contribution of alien species to the total breeding population numbers, biomass and energy use of an entire taxonomic assemblage at a large spatial scale, using data on British birds from 1997 and 2013. A total of 216 native and 16 alien bird species were recorded as breeding in Great Britain across the two census years. Only 2.8-3.7% of British breeding bird individuals were alien, but alien species co-opted 11.9-13.8% of the energy used by the assemblage, and contributed 19.1-21.1% of assemblage biomass. Neither the population sizes nor biomasses of native and alien species differed, on average, in either census, but alien species biomass is higher than native species biomass for a given population size. Species richness underestimates the potential effects of alien bird species in Britain, which have disproportionately high overall biomass and population energy use. The main driver of these effects is the ring-necked pheasant (Phasianus colchicus), which comprised 74-81% of alien biomass, yet the breeding population of this species is still only a small fraction of the estimated 35 million birds released in the UK in autumn. The biomass of this release exceeds that of the entire breeding avifauna, and suggests that the pheasant should have an important role in structuring the communities in which it is embedded.

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“…The quality of that umbrella has, however, been questioned: ‘Unfortunately there is a perversion of gamekeeping that breeds pheasants like battery chickens…with this comes cutting back the undergrowth, reducing a wood to a scatter of timber over … grasses and sedges’ (Rackham, ). The environmental impacts of large‐scale pheasant releases are not well understood, but it is known that they can have impacts on biodiversity in woodland (Neumann, Holloway, Sage, & Hoodless, ; Sage et al, ), grassland (Callegari, Bonham, Hoodless, Sage, & Holloway, ) and hedgerow (Sage, Woodburn, Draycott, Hoodless, & Clarke, ). Supplementary feeding of released pheasants may increase the risk of disease transmission among wildlife at feeders (Lawson et al, ), attract rats (Sanchez‐Garcia, Buner, & Aebischer, ) and drive ecological change in wildlife populations (Robb, McDonald, Chamberlain, & Bearhop, ).…”

Section: Pheasant Shootingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Shooting pheasants for sport: What does the death of Cecil tell us?

2020

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People hunt and kill animals for sport in many parts of the world. This raises many issues, some of which were brought to the fore when a lion Panthera leo, nicknamed Cecil, was killed by a trophy hunter in Zimbabwe in 2015. Cecil's death led to an unprecedented public reaction in Europe and the USA, and a debate in which opponents and supporters of sport hunting advanced different types of argument based on, inter alia, conservation, animal welfare and economics. The reaction to the Cecil event provides a perspective for scrutinizing sport hunting more widely. In this article we explore parallels between lion trophy hunting in Africa (which can involve either wild or captive‐bred lions) and shooting of common pheasant Phasianus colchicus, a sport which is largely sustained in the UK by the annual release of over 40 million captive‐bred birds. These two forms of sport hunting share common themes that are likely to be influential for the future of sport hunting more widely. These include the extent to which sport hunting maintains land for wildlife, and the impacts of intensification (e.g. the extent to which quarry are reared and released). Concern for the welfare of quarry animals is a dominant theme in debates about hunting. These themes are likely to be relevant for the conservation of many species hunted for sport. Increasing distaste for the killing of animals for sport in many countries may lead to the end of some types of sport hunting, with implications for both habitat and wildlife conservation. It would be both prudent and appropriate for conservationists to increase the urgency with which they seek alternative methods for preventing loss of biodiverse land to other uses. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

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Releasing of pheasants for shooting in the UK alters woodland invertebrate communities

Cited by 16 publications

References 29 publications

Why do many pheasants released in the UK die, and how can we best reduce their natural mortality?

Why do many pheasants released in the UK die, and how can we best reduce their natural mortality?

Abundance, biomass and energy use of native and alien breeding birds in Britain

Shooting pheasants for sport: What does the death of Cecil tell us?

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