Legal Harvest of Shorebirds and Resident Game Birds on a Caribbean island: A Martinique Case Study

Abstract

Legal hunting practiced under regulatory frameworks is not always assessed for its sustainability. The lack of harvest data is of particular concern in the case of birds occurring on islands. Resident species on islands often exhibit limited geographic ranges and inherently small population sizes, rendering them particularly susceptible to environmental and anthropogenic threats. Islands also support seasonally fluctuating populations of migratory species, providing essential habitats for stopovers and non-breeding periods. Within this context, the sustainability of gamebird harvest practiced on islands within a regulatory framework needs to be evaluated to inform management and prevent negative impacts on populations. Here, we present a case study of an island-wide assessment of bird hunting estimates, based on data available from a legal hunting program, in Martinique, a tropical oceanic island part of the Caribbean biodiversity hotspot. Our objectives were to determine the magnitude of gamebird harvest, track changes in harvest levels over time, and assess harvest sustainability. Our assessment, which is based on hunting logbooks and hunter surveys between the 2012-2013 and 2021-2022 hunting seasons, provides harvest estimates for two groups of migratory species, shorebirds (Charadriidae, Scolopacidae) and teals (Anatidae), and two groups of resident species (Columbidae and Mimidae). In Martinique, harvest management measures, combined with increased hunters engagement and enforcement of regulations, has led more stringent harvest regulations, improved compliance from hunters, and a reduction of Martiniques national shorebird harvest. However, considering continued and rapid shorebirds population declines across the Western Atlantic flyway, shorebird harvest assessment at the flyway level remains a priority.