J. Andrew Royle
Ben Augustine
2024
<p><span>The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service monitors species-specific waterfowl (ducks, seaducks, geese, and brant) harvest through two hunter surveys, one that estimates the total harvest for each waterfowl group, and a second that estimates the species composition of each waterfowl group. Point estimates for species-specific harvest can be computed by multiplying the estimated total harvest by the estimated proportion of the total harvest of each species. However, to date, no uncertainty estimates have been available. Here, we combine these two data sources to provide species-specific harvest estimates at the state and flyway level while characterizing the uncertainty via Bayesian estimation. We take a similar approach to </span><a id="xref-ref-8-1" class="xref-bibr" href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.27.603620v1#ref-8" data-mce-href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.27.603620v1#ref-8">Smith<span> </span><i>et al</i>. (2022)</a><span>, providing both estimates that treat yearly data as independent and estimates that share information across years via a random walk process. We then discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each approach.</span></p>
application/pdf
10.1101/2024.07.27.603620
en
bioRxiv
Estimating species-specific U.S. waterfowl harvest
text