Variations in band reporting rate and implications for kill rate in Greater Snow Geese

We assessed spatial and temporal variation in reporting probability of banded Greater Snow Geese (Chen caerulescens atlantica) shot by hunters in eastern North America and evaluated potential residual biases in kill rate estimation. Adult Greater Snow Geese were marked with reward (value: US$10, $20...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Avian Conservation and Ecology
Main Authors: Guillaume Souchay, Olivier Gimenez, Gilles Gauthier, Roger Pradel
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Resilience Alliance 2014
Subjects:
Atlantic Flyway
band recovery
Greater Snow Goose
kill rate
reporting rate
reward band
spatial variation
temporal variation
waterfowl
Plant culture
SB1-1110
Environmental sciences
GE1-350
Plant ecology
QK900-989
Arctic
Canada
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.5751/ACE-00628-090101
https://doaj.org/article/37811ba43f004c04a8254754d60932be
Description
Summary:We assessed spatial and temporal variation in reporting probability of banded Greater Snow Geese (Chen caerulescens atlantica) shot by hunters in eastern North America and evaluated potential residual biases in kill rate estimation. Adult Greater Snow Geese were marked with reward (value: US$10, $20, $30, $50, and $100) and standard bands ($0, control) in the Canadian Arctic from 2003 to 2005. We used a spatially explicit multinomial model based on 200 direct recoveries from 4256 banded geese to estimate reporting rate and harvest rate. We found that reporting rate for standard bands varied over time whereas harvest rate was higher in Canada than in the U.S. The reporting probability increased from 0.40 ± 0.11 in the first year of the study to 0.82 ± 0.14 and 0.84 ± 0.13 the second and third years, respectively. Overall, these reporting rates are higher than two previous estimates for this population, which leads to lower estimates of kill rate. However, the large annual differences in reporting rates found in this study lead to uncertainty in the estimation of kill rate. We suggest that the increase in reporting rate in the last two year of the study may be due to the dissemination of information among hunters regarding the presence of reward bands on birds, resulting in increased reporting rate for all bands. This raises issues about the need to adequately inform the public in such large-scale studies to avoid undesirable temporal trends over the course of the study.

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