Environmental Studies Department, Antioch University New England, Keene, New Hampshire, United States of America.
Carnivore Coexistence Lab, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2021 May 5;16(5):e0244261. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0244261. eCollection 2021.
The reintroduced red wolf (Canis rufus) population in northeastern North Carolina declined to 7 known wolves by October 2020, the majority of which is due to poaching (illegal killing), the major component of verified anthropogenic mortality in this and many other carnivore populations. Poaching is still not well understood and is often underestimated, partly as a result of cryptic poaching, when poachers conceal evidence. Cryptic poaching inhibits our understanding of the causes and consequences of anthropogenic mortality, which is important to conservation as it can inform us about future population patterns within changing political and human landscapes. We estimate risk for marked adult red wolves of 5 causes of death (COD: legal, nonhuman, unknown, vehicle and poached) and disappearance, describe variation in COD in relation to hunting season, and compare time to disappearance or death. We include unknown fates in our risk estimates. We found that anthropogenic COD accounted for 0.78-0.85 of 508 marked animals, including poaching and cryptic poaching, which we estimated at 0.51-0.64. Risk of poaching and disappearance was significantly higher during hunting season. Mean time from collaring until nonhuman COD averaged 376 days longer than time until poached and 642 days longer than time until disappearance. Our estimates of risk differed from prior published estimates, as expected by accounting for unknown fates explicitly. We quantify the effects on risk for three scenarios for unknown fates, which span conservative to most likely COD. Implementing proven practices that prevent poaching or hasten successful reintroduction may reverse the decline to extinction in the wild of this critically endangered population. Our findings add to a growing literature on endangered species protections and enhancing the science used to measure poaching worldwide.
引入北卡罗来纳州东北部的红狼（Canis rufus）数量到 2020 年 10 月已减少到 7 只已知的狼，其中大部分是由于偷猎（非法捕杀），这是该地区和许多其他食肉动物种群中经证实的人为死亡率的主要组成部分。偷猎仍然没有得到很好的理解，而且经常被低估，部分原因是偷猎者隐藏证据导致的隐蔽性偷猎。隐蔽性偷猎抑制了我们对人为死亡率的原因和后果的理解，这对保护很重要，因为它可以为我们提供有关在不断变化的政治和人类景观中未来种群模式的信息。我们估计了 5 种死亡原因（合法、非人为、未知、车辆和偷猎）和失踪标记成年红狼的风险，描述了与狩猎季节相关的 COD 变化，并比较了失踪或死亡的时间。我们将未知命运包括在风险估计中。我们发现人为 COD 占 508 只标记动物的 0.78-0.85，包括偷猎和隐蔽性偷猎，我们估计为 0.51-0.64。狩猎季节期间，偷猎和失踪的风险明显更高。从佩戴项圈到非人为 COD 的平均时间比偷猎和失踪的时间长 376 天和 642 天。我们的风险估计与之前公布的估计不同，这是由于明确考虑了未知命运的结果。我们量化了三种未知命运情景对风险的影响，这些情景涵盖了最保守到最可能的 COD。实施可防止偷猎或加快成功重新引入的成熟实践可能会扭转该极度濒危种群在野外灭绝的趋势。我们的发现增加了有关濒危物种保护和增强全球用于衡量偷猎的科学的不断增长的文献。
