Age ratio, crippling losses and factors affecting daily hunting bags of European Turtle-dove in Spain: Implications for sustainable harvest management of a declining migratory species

Knowledge of seasonal variation in hunting pressure and the demographic composition of hunting bags is likely to be important for the effective management of quarry species. Such knowledge is particularly important where regulatory mechanisms aim to avoid the over-exploitation of quarry species having unfavourable conservation status. We compiled information on the age composition of harvested European Turtle-doves (Streptopelia turtur), and the daily numbers of doves shot and retrieved from 68 hunting estates spread across four Spanish regions. We use these data to describe temporal variation, and identify factors affecting daily hunting bags, age composition and crippling losses. We found that more juvenile doves were hunted than adults (and more than expected in a stable population) especially at the beginning of the hunting season, suggesting greater vulnerability of juveniles to hunting. The number of doves hunted each day declined through the hunting season and increased with the number of hunters present. Crippling losses averaged 9.6 % of all doves shot; applying this rate to recent Spanish government hunting statistics suggests under-recording of approximately 90,000 doves annually for the entire country. Our data on age composition and crippling losses can serve as direct inputs into future models of sustainable harvest for Turtle Dove in Europe. Our results highlight the importance of improving knowledge about the variables influencing take at the hunting event level for designing more efficiency regulatory measures. This study is part of a project funded by RSPB/Birdlife (ref UCTR160232), CSIC (ref 201630E096) and Ministry of Climate Action, Food and Rural Agenda of Catalonia. LMZ was also supported by a Margarita Salas fellowship funded by European Union-NextGenerationEU, Ministry of Universities and Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, through a call from Castilla-La Mancha University.