How will you determine raven mortality when using corvicides in planted eggs? How will you determine if raven populations have the ability to increase after you lower the population. How will you determine if the Sage grouse brood numbers increase after you destroy ravens.
Answer:
Because of the propensity for ravens to remove and cache the poison egg baits, it is often difficult to directly locate ravens that have died due to the poison. The USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Services, has conducted previous work that determined that it will take 4 egg baits to kill 1 raven.
The Idaho Department of Fish and Game has initiated standardized raven surveys in the raven control areas to track raven numbers and trends.
The identified raven control area is only 1.4% of the land area in Idaho and we do not anticipate having a negative impact on ravens statewide.
We will track the response of sage-grouse populations by continuing to monitor lek trends in the control areas, and compare that to the statewide trend.
Answered on:
Wednesday, March 26, 2014 - 9:47 AM MDT