Unravelling the sex- and age-specific impact of poaching mortality with multievent modeling.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Poaching is a prominent source of 'hidden hurdles', cryptic impacts of human activities that may hinder the conservation of animal populations. Estimating poaching mortality is challenging, as the evidence for illegal killing is not outwardly obvious. Using resighting and recovery data collected on 141 marked red deer Cervus elaphus within the Stelvio National Park (central Italian Alps), we show how multievent models allow to assess the direct impacts of illegal harvesting on age- and sex-specific survival, accounting for uncertainty over mortality causes.

Results

Mortality caused by poaching was consistently higher for males than for females in all age classes. In males, the probability of dying from poaching was higher for extreme age classes, while in f

SUBMITTER: Corlatti L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6567384 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature