Research article - Peer-reviewed, 2020
Strength of correlation between wildlife collision data and hunting bags varies among ungulate species and with management scale
Neumann, Wiebke; Widemo, Fredrik; Singh, Navinder; Seiler, Andreas; Cromsigt, JorisAbstract
Most European ungulate species are increasing in numbers and expanding their range. For the management and monitoring of these species, 64% of European countries rely on indirect proxies of abundance (e.g., hunting bag statistics). With increasing ungulate numbers, data on ungulate-vehicle collisions (UVC) may provide an important and inexpensive, complementary data source. Currently, it is unclear how bag statistics compare with UVC. A direct comparison of these two indices is important because both are used in ungulate management. We evaluated the relationship between UVC and ungulate hunting bags across bioclimatic, regional, and local scales, using five time lags (t(-3)to t(+1)) for the five most common wild ungulate species in Sweden. For all species, hunting bags and UVC correlated positively, but correlation strength and time lags varied across scales and among species. The two indices correlated most strongly at the local management scale. Correlation between both indices was strong for the smaller deer species and wild boar, in particular, but much weaker for moose where we found the best fit using a 2-year time lag. For the other species, indices from the same year correlated best. We argue that the reason for moose data behaving differently is that, in Sweden, moose are formally managed using a 3-year time plan, while the other species are not. Accordingly, moose hunting bags are influenced more strongly by density-independent processes than bags of the other species. Consequently, the mismatch between the two indices may generate conflicting conclusions for management depending on the method applied.Keywords
Ungulate monitoring; Management units; UVC; Cervids; Census; SwedenPublished in
European Journal of Wildlife Research2020, volume: 66, number: 6, article number: 86
Publisher: SPRINGER
Authors' information
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Wildlife, Fish and Environmental Studies
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Wildlife, Fish and Environmental Studies
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Wildlife, Fish and Environmental Studies
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Ecology
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Wildlife, Fish and Environmental Studies
Nelson Mandela University
UKÄ Subject classification
Ecology
Fish and Wildlife Management
Publication Identifiers
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10344-020-01421-x
URI (permanent link to this page)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/108252