Open AccessCan culling Barred Owls save a declining Northern Spotted Owl population?
Author(s) -
Bodine Erin N.,
Capaldi Alex
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
natural resource modeling
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.28
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1939-7445
pISSN - 0890-8575
DOI - 10.1111/nrm.12131
Subject(s) - culling , wildlife , competition (biology) , habitat , population , fishery , geography , ecology , biology , demography , herd , sociology
Data collected over the past 25 years reveal that Northern Spotted Owls ( Strix occidentalis caurina ) of the Oregon Coast region are being displaced by invasive Barred Owls ( Strix varia ). A component of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recovery plan is studying the culling of Barred Owls from Spotted Owl habitat. Using information theory to perform a model selection, we fit the most parsimonious ordinary differential equation competition model to the data. We then augment the model to incorporate Barred Owl culling and determine the minimum culling rate required to completely eliminate the Barred Owl population and the amount of time required to achieve such an elimination for various culling rates. Our analysis shows that even with culling Barred Owls, there exists no coexistence equilibrium given the current growth and competition parameters.