Using Stable Isotope Techniques To Complement Existing Northern Pintail Management.

• Main Author: Wojtaszek, Dariusz
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Scholarship@Western 2022
• Subjects: Northern Pintail; Waterfowl Management; Stable Isotopes; North America; Adaptive Harvest Management; Boreal Forest; Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Canada; Anas acuta
• Online Access: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/9119; https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/context/etd/article/11690/viewcontent/Wojtaszek_Revised_Thesis.pdf

The Northern Pintail (Anas acuta) is a waterfowl game species with North American population levels consistently below long-term management goals. Native habitat loss to agriculture likely reduced recruitment and limits population growth. My objective was to provide a proof-of-concept approach to using stable isotope ratios (δ2H, δ13C, δ15N) in feathers to infer spatial origins and habitat selection to complement existing pintail management. I found 46% of all sampled pintails had likely moult origins in the boreal biome, compared to 32% estimated by breeding population survey and 55% of recruitment of young took place in the northern boreal region of Canada. I determined the source of pintail harvest in eastern North America which included areas in Atlantic Canada and the mid-continent. Wildlife managers can use these findings to inform adaptive harvest management protocols and better represent the regional heterogeneity of population parameters such as recruitment related to origins as described by my results.