Authors: Buner, Francis; Schaub, Michael

Source: Wildlife Biology, Volume 14, Number 1, March 2008 , pp. 26-35(10)

Publisher: Nordic Board for Wildlife Research

Abstract:

The quality of released individuals can have a significant impact on the success of reintroduction projects. We tested which of the following release techniques resulted in the highest survival of released grey partridges Perdix perdix in Switzerland : 1) translocation of wild adult birds, 2) release of captive parent-reared adults as family groups, and 3) fostering of captive parent-reared chicks to wild barren pairs. Wild hatched offspring (F1 birds) from our re-established breeding pairs served as the control group. We used a multi-state capture-recapture model to estimate monthly survival rates from the data based on monitoring of radio-tagged individuals and reobservation and recovery of ringed individuals. Survival tended to be highest in wild-hatched partridges of the founder population (mean ± SE; 0.90 ± 0.03), followed by that of fostered chicks (0.86 ± 0.03) and translocated adult wild birds (0.82 ± 0.06). While survival of these groups was not statistically different from each other, survival of captive-reared adults was significantly lower (0.70 ± 0.06). We discuss the implication of our results for further partridge reintroduction projects.

Keywords: MULTI-STATE MODEL; PARENT FOSTERING; PARENT REARING; PERDIX PERDIX; TRANSLOCATION

Document Type: Research article

Publication date: 2008-03-01

More about this publication?

• WILDLIFE BIOLOGY was initiated in 1994 by the Nordic Council for Wildlife Research (NKV) and is published four times a year (March, June, September and December). Wildlife Biology is sponsored by NKV, and the National Environmental Research Institute (NERI), Kalø, is responsible for the technical production.
  WILDLIFE BIOLOGY is a high-quality scientific forum directing concise and up-to-date information to scientists, administrators, game managers and conservationists.
• Editorial Board
• Information for Authors
• Subscribe to this Title
• ingentaconnect is not responsible for the content or availability of external websites

Related content

• In this: publication
• By this: publisher
• In this Subject: Forestry ,  Biology/Life Sciences ,  Zoology
• By this author: Buner, Francis ;  Schaub, Michael

Website © Publishing Technology. Article copyright remains with the publisher, society or author(s) as specified within the article.

• Terms and conditions
• Privacy policy
• Information for advertisers