Gamebird population surveys are used to assess population size, trends, and distribution and to provide management agencies with critical information to manage populations and develop hunting regulations. Survey methods to obtain information about populations vary from visual counts of individuals, auditory or call-counts, hunter harvest surveys, and advanced methods including radiotelemetry or banding studies. Such surveys may be focused on individual species or whole taxa and are implemented at local, regional, or continental scales. Data generated during these surveys are then analyzed using a similarly variable set of statistical analyses to infer population demographic rates, population age-structure, or develop indices to or estimates of abundance.
We propose to develop a monitoring strategy and implementation plan for gamebird species of the Mohave and Sonoran Deserts of California. We will limit the scope of our survey development to quail and dove species residing in the Sonoran, Colorado, and Mohave Deserts, the Great Basin and other arid highland ecosystems where large scale habitat monitoring programs (AIM and NRI) are operational. This project will consist of three objectives:
- Conduct a literature review detailing pros and cons and suitability of survey methods used to investigate population abundance, trends, and distribution of quail and dove species.
- Develop and conduct pilot investigation of a survey protocol for quail and dove that integrates and coordinates with the large-scale habitat monitoring programs administered by the BLM (AIM) and NRCS (NRI).
- Develop methods to integrate survey analysis protocol with local, regional, and continental bird survey programs (e.g., Mourning Dove Call-Count Survey, Breeding Bird Survey, Christmas Bird Count). We intend to utilize the AIM pilot program and the data points BLM established as part of the Riverside East, Solar Energy Zone (SEZ) Project. The one hundred AIM points put on the ground by BLM were established to try and explore the utility of the program in analyzing the 147,000 acres solar development in eastern Riverside Co. We plan to use at least ten of these sites as reference points to develop the proposed protocols for our designated gamebirds.