Shooting may aggravate rather than alleviate conflicts between migratory geese and agriculture

Abstract

Many migratory goose populations have thrived over the past decades and their reliance on agricultural resources has often led to conflicts. Control and management measures are sought after but since migratory geese use several sites in their annual cycle, local management actions should consider their potential effects further down the flyway. We used a behaviour‐based migration model to illustrate the consequences of management actions involving hunting, derogation shooting and scaring at single or multiple locations along the flyway, considering various mechanisms of how geese might perceive shooting/hunting. Furthermore, as a proxy for the agricultural damage caused, we calculated the per capita biomass consumption between scenarios—both over time and cumulatively. We found that hunting, shooting and scaring can result in a suite of direct and indirect consequences on migration and foraging behaviour. Most importantly, hunting/shooting on a particular site had implications not only for the behaviour at the actual site but also for behaviour at, and use of, other sites. Furthermore, the specific consequences of shooting/hunting could be counter‐intuitive, that is, aggravate rather than alleviate agricultural damage, depending on where along the migration route changes had taken place and the mechanisms through which hunting/shooting was assumed to affect geese. Synthesis and applications. Management plans are being discussed or implemented for several migratory goose populations and often include shooting, hunting or scaring at one or multiple locations. Using a behaviour‐based model, we assessed the consequences of such local management measures and found that they can indeed lead to a reduction of agricultural conflicts locally but may also aggravate the conflict or shift it to other sites along the flyway. Thus, we recommend the use of these models to scrutinize the efficiency of specific management measures and to assist in identifying an international management regime that minimizes conflicts on a flyway level while still maintaining migratory populations.

Achieving international biodiversity targets: Learning from local norms, values and actions regarding migratory waterfowl management in Kazakhstan

“…Taken together, our results highlight the importance of integrating local-level context and management with conservation policy targeted at the broader migratory range (Bauer et al, 2018). In northern Kazakhstan accidental offtake of LWfG due to misidentification has been estimated at one to three LWfG per 100 Greater White-fronted or Greylag Geese (which can be hunted legally); although in one area offtake was as high as one LWfG per 20-30 Greater White-fronted or Greylag Geese (Yerokhov, 2013).…”

“…This would enable understanding of hotspots of impact across species' ranges, where regions or countries have different resources available for enforcement, and where rates of legal and illegal hunting are higher or lower (Cusack et al, 2020). Crucial to this is the monitoring of migration patterns and return rate across the species' range, information that will enable more realistic and robust population models to be implemented (Bauer et al, 2018). Second, local practices should be more strongly linked with global targets through peer‐to‐peer technology and information sharing (Tinch et al, 2018).…”

Environmental models in waterfowl management under uncertainty

“…Reducing crop damage by reducing goose population. Although harvesting is perceived to be a natural solution to the increasing population of waterfowl, shooting may aggravate the conflict between geese and agriculture instead of solving it (Bauer et al, 2018). • Disturbances and deterrents.…”

Predator Control Needs a Standard of Unbiased Randomized Experiments With Cross-Over Design

“…Most scientists would agree that predation vanishes when zero predators are present, but there is substantial disagreement about what happens with removal of part of the predator population. For predators and other wildlife posing problems for people, there remain substantial uncertainties about the consequences of removal for survivors and subsequent generations, effects on sympatric species, and additive or compensatory responses in other mortality and reproductive factors (Cote and Sutherland, 1997;Vucetich, 2012;Borg et al, 2015;Creel et al, 2015;Bauer et al, 2018;Beggs et al, 2019). Uncertainty about the result of predator removal might propagate into uncertainty about its functional effectiveness for protecting human interests as we explain below.…”

“…Perhaps, killing a predator returning to a carcass soon after predation might protect other livestock (Woodroffe et al, 2005), but experiments with such methods also show surprisingly high error rates (Sacks et al, 1999). Indeed, recent, independent research in several regions found killing wild animals could exacerbate future threats to human interests, e.g., cougars (Cooley et al, 2009a;Peebles et al, 2013), birds (Bauer et al, 2018;Beggs et al, 2019), and wolves (Santiago-Avila et al, 2018a) -without requiring us to delve into the unresolved controversy and contested evidence about wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains, USA or in Southern Europe (Wielgus and Peebles, 2014;Bradley et al, 2015;Fernández-Gil et al, 2015;Imbert et al, 2016;Poudyal et al, 2016;Kompaniyets and Evans, 2017). The uncertainties about predator removal reflect the indirect application unlike the lion and the goat hypothetical above.…”