Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal for Nature Conservation journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jnc A shot in the dark: Sport hunting of declining corvids promotes the inadvertent shooting of threatened red-billed choughs Guillermo Blanco a, ⁎ , Jesús A. Cuevas b , Óscar Frías a , José L. González del Barrio a a Department of Evolutionary Ecology, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, CSIC, José Gutiérrez Abascal 2, 28006 Madrid, Spain b Department of Life Sciences, UD Ecology, University of Alcalá, Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, Spain ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Game management Hunting side-effects Mixed flocks Red-billed chough Shooting misidentification Western jackdaw ABSTRACT Inadvertent shooting of protected species due to misidentification or spatio-temporal coincidence with more abundant target species of similar appearance and habits is a frequent side-effect of sport hunting. Protected corvid species of special conservation concern were present in all Spanish Autonomous regions where hunting of corvids of similar appearance and habits is legally permitted.We assessed the extent to which Western jackdaws (Corvus monedula) and Red-billed choughs (Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax) shared distributions in central Spain, and whether this can cause mortality and temporary and permanent crippling of threatened and strictly protected choughs. About 1000–3000 ‘black corvids’ were annually hunted in the Madrid region without species-specific identification according to official statistics. Assuming that these corvids were mostly jackdaws, this accounted for about 5–20% of the total estimated winter population of this declining species. Jackdaws and choughs shared local distribution ranges and their abundances were spatially correlated during winter. The abundance of jackdaws was positively correlated with the estimates of killed black corvids (including jackdaws and Carrion crows, Corvus corone, which were not identified to species in hunting statistics). As with jackdaws, hunting was the main cause of mortality of choughs. The impact of hunting on non-target choughs can be strong—even live individuals can be temporarily affected by damage to flight feathers or other wounds, and birds can be crippled for life when shooting affects the bill or other body parts. To date, there is no framework for informed decision- making in game management or any published evidence-based or standardized criteria supported by scientific research aimed to establish a hunting status or quotas for corvids and many other common bird species in Spain. This combination of subjectivity and a lack of information makes it near impossible to establish a harvesting scheme without putting at risk the populations of target and non-target species. Given the strong decline of currently hunted corvids in Spain (especially the jackdaw), the complete prohibition of hunting these species is urgently encouraged to attempt to avoid exacerbating the collapse of their populations and that of non-target species. 1. Introduction Wildlife subjected to human-induced mortality through hunting can be especially vulnerable to inappropriate management based on poor demographic and ecological information (Newton, 1998; Sutherland, 2001; Weinbaum, Brashares, Golden, & Getz, 2013). In particular, many bird species hunted for ‘recreation’ or as ‘pests’ have been his- torically extirpated from many regions, even to the point of extinction (Butchart et al., 2018; Gaston & Fuller, 2007; Szabo, Khwaja, Garnett, & Butchart, 2012). Other previously or currently hunted species are today among those with strong population declines due to over-exploitation (BirdLife International, 2013), with overarching implications for eco- system integrity and resilience through the loss of their ecological function (Sekercioglu, 2006). Inadequate hunting regulation and man- agement have been frequently blamed for the negative trends of many of these species (BirdLife International, 2011, 2015), especially due to unreliable population size estimates and subjective estimates of abun- dance often used by managers to establish limits on numbers to be taken, i.e. “bag limits” or “hunting bags” (Caro, Delibes-Mateos, Viñuela, López-Lucero, & Arroyo, 2015; Keane, Brooke, & McGowan, 2005; Pellikka, Kuikka, Lindén, & Varis, 2005; Stevens, Bence, Porter, & Jones, 2017). These shortcomings are generally associated with poor knowledge of the ecology, population dynamics and demography of the target species at relevant spatio-temporal scales (Newton, 1998; Sutherland, 2001; Williams, Nichols, & Conroy, 2002), overlooking the impact of poaching and other methods of illegal persecution (Brochet https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnc.2019.125739 Received 29 May 2019; Received in revised form 12 July 2019; Accepted 1 September 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: g.blanco@csic.es (G. Blanco). Journal for Nature Conservation 52 (2019) 125739 1617-1381/ © 2019 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved. T