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Monitoring Texas Wood Ducks With a Cooperative Nest‐Box Program
Author(s) -
RANSOM DEAN,
FRENTRESS CARL D.
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
the journal of wildlife management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.94
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1937-2817
pISSN - 0022-541X
DOI - 10.2193/2007-108
Subject(s) - nest box , nest (protein structural motif) , wildlife , demographics , geography , ecology , biology , predation , demography , biochemistry , sociology
We analyzed 8 years of data from the Texas Cooperative Nest Box Program initiated in 1988 by Texas Parks and Wildlife, USA, as a means of involving private cooperators in statewide wood duck ( Aix sponsa ) management. Cooperators operated ≤9 boxes and most reported nest‐box data for only 1 year (56.5%) and 2 years (20.6%) over the 8‐year life of the project. Mean nest‐box use differed among ecological regions of the state ( F =4.23, df=6, P = 0.001) but did not exceed 30% in any region. Mean nest‐box success ranged between 74–91% across ecological regions during 1988–1995, but annual estimates of nest‐box success lacked precision (CVs >30%) in most years for all regions. Our project was unsuccessful as a management tool for monitoring wood duck demographics. Future efforts should focus on improving the amount and quality of data collected from box‐nesting wood ducks.