Identifying target reference points for harvesting assessment-limited wildlife populations: a case study.

摘要: Identifying appropriate strategies for sustainable harvest is a challenge many terrestrial vertebrate species because of uncertain system dynamics, limited data to inform population models, and potentially conflicting objectives that seek maintain populations at desirable levels. The absence monitoring assessment infrastructure needed regularly estimate abundance accentuates this species, limits application rigorous state-dependent frameworks decision making are commonly advocated in natural resource management. Reference points, which define management targets or triggers changing management, often used guide decision-making, but suffer from ambiguity when developed without explicit consideration uncertainty trade-offs among competing objectives. We describe an approach developing unambiguous target reference points assessment-limited using structured making, demonstrate the develop rates fall Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) harvests face dynamics. use simulation analyses identify optimal accomplishing uncertainty, with robust performance over broad regions demographic model parameter space. parameters wildlife managers interact determine Turkeys, formally acknowledging range plausible values structurally results more conservative than suggested by previously published studies. framework described here provides conceptual quantitative extending our other while structural