US Fish & Wildlife Service
Date of this Version
5-2009
Citation
Mourning Dove Banding Needs Assessment, Prepared by Dave Otis, USGS Iowa Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, May, 2009.
Abstract
Introduction
The primary justification for an operational national mourning dove banding program is to provide data necessary for a long‐term informed harvest management strategy as envisioned in the National Mourning Dove Strategic Harvest Management Plan (Anonymous 2005). This strategy requires development of demographic population models which in turn depend on estimates of population survival and recruitment rates as well as harvest rates. These estimates are derived wholly or in part from banding data.
Ideally, a formal banding needs assessment would be developed given an explicitly defined harvest strategy framework. At the current time such a strategy has not yet been completed. However, this assessment makes the logical assumption that any subsequent harvest strategy will require estimates of population vital rates and associated predictions of population growth rate, and this assumption provides the context for the proposed technique.