Abstract
Eurasian migratory duck species represent a natural resource shared between European countries. As is evident throughout human harvest history, lack of coordinated management and monitoring at appropriate levels often leads to ‘the tragedy of the commons’, where shared populations suffer overexploitation. Effective management can also be hampered by poor understanding of the factors that limit and regulate migratory populations throughout their flyways, and over time. Following decades of population increase, some European duck populations now show signs of levelling off or even decline, underlining the need for more active and effective management. In Europe, the existing mechanisms for delivering effective management of duck populations are limited, despite the need and enthusiasm for establishing adaptive management (AM) schemes for wildlife populations. Existing international legal agreements already oblige European countries to sustainably manage migratory waterbirds. Although the lack of coordinated demographic and hunting data remains a challenge to sustainable management planning, AM provides a robust decision‐making framework even in the presence of uncertainty regarding demographic and other information. In this paper we investigate the research and monitoring needs in Europe to successfully apply AM to ducks, and search for possible model species, focusing on freshwater species (in contrast to sea duck species) in the East Atlantic flyway. Based on current knowledge, we suggest that common tealAnas crecca,Eurasian wigeonMareca penelopeand common goldeneyeBucephala clangularepresent the best species for testing the application of an AM modelling approach to duck populations in Europe. Applying AM to huntable species with relatively good population data as models for broader implementation represents a cost effective way of starting to develop AM on a European flyway scale for ducks, and potentially other waterbirds in the future.
Highlights
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We suggest that common teal Anas crecca, Eurasian wigeon Mareca penelope and common goldeneye Bucephala clangula represent the best species for testing the application of an adaptive management (AM) modelling approach to duck populations in Europe
We review the limitations of current monitoring and research to support flyway-level AM of duck species in Europe and seek model species with which to start the development of such an approach
Summary
The effectiveness of methods to manage natural resources depends on the specific features that characterise the resource and manager’s abilities. The basis of AM is to ensure an iterative feedback process from decision, to monitoring, assessment and technical learning to contribute to year’s decisionmaking This process ensures the added benefit of the AM approach, namely that it provides a dynamic model, which focuses on reducing model uncertainty (Williams and Brown 2014). AHM is an iterative process that integrates monitoring, assessments and decision-making, and regular re-assessment of management target based on newly acquired knowledge It is seen as the best, not entirely trouble-free, method for managing waterfowl under prevailing uncertainties (Nichols et al 2007, Johnson et al 2015). While AHM and NAWMP have some shared targets, the two programmes have been developed independently (Runge et al 2006)
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