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Combining data from multiple sources to design a raptor census - the first national survey of the Montagu’s Harrier Circus pygargus in Poland
- Source :
- Bird Conservation International. 28:350-362
- Publication Year :
- 2017
- Publisher :
- Cambridge University Press (CUP), 2017.
-
Abstract
- SummaryThe effective conservation management of vulnerable taxa requires up-to-date evaluation of population size. Montagu’s Harrier Circus pygargus is a farmland raptor of high conservation concern and threatened by agricultural intensification. However, within many European countries, including Poland, the status of this species remains unknown or questionable and information on its breeding is incomplete or imprecise. Here, we estimate the size of the national population of the Montagu’s Harrier and argue that using data from multiple sources may help to design national bird surveys and better contribute to identifying population trends. We built a predictive model based on a presence-absence data obtained by volunteer-based citizen-science projects conducted in Poland during 2000–2012. Afterwards, from the set of 10 km x 10 km squares of high predicted habitat suitability, 100 sampling plots were randomly chosen and regularly surveyed by experienced ornithologists in 2013 and 2014. The evaluation of fieldwork efficiency by the double-observer approach allowed detectability to be estimated and accounted for while estimating population size. We estimated the Polish Montagu’s Harrier population at almost 3,400 breeding pairs (95% CI: 2,700–4,300), thus constituting 20% of the European Union (EU) population. Furthermore, we showed that public-gathered data originating from multiple sources offered great potential for regular surveys to obtain large-scale estimates of population size.
- Subjects :
- 0106 biological sciences
education.field_of_study
Ecology
biology
010604 marine biology & hydrobiology
Population size
Population
Harrier
Census
biology.organism_classification
010603 evolutionary biology
01 natural sciences
Population density
Fishery
Geography
Circus pygargus
Threatened species
media_common.cataloged_instance
Animal Science and Zoology
European union
education
Nature and Landscape Conservation
media_common
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 14740001 and 09592709
- Volume :
- 28
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Bird Conservation International
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........87c4f758f7f18ca6f14e4cf33952acae