Goosemaster
Well-known member
Are released birds going to breed with wild birds, and will this cause wild birds to behave like pen raised birds?
Released birds
- Thread starter Goosemaster
- Start date
BrownDogsCan2
Well-known member
No! Be dead by the weekend
gimruis
Well-known member
Haha. I was thinking more by the end of the day.
jackrabbit
Active member
I'm not a biologist but I've read articles stating that releasing birds is bad because they will mate with wild birds and thus put a "weaker" gene pool into the wild. I've read articles that said releasing birds is good, because any released birds that have made it long enough to mate have basically become wild anyways so it is helping the birds. Who knows, they both make sense to me.
Chestle
Well-known member
The 111th anniversary of the first successful release of Ring-necked Pheasants in S.D.
Vague and incomplete are two words that have been used in the past to describe the early records of South Dakota ring-necked pheasant introductions. Recent research by Lonnie Shafer has
If you read that article on the history of pheasant stocking in South Dakota you will see that it is at least possible to establish a pheasant population from penned/farmed birds.
South Dakota, probably the top state for pheasant hunting, began it's climb to greatness with pen raised/farmed pheasant. After they established a population with penned/farmed birds, they began trapping and transplanting the progeny of these penned/farmed birds.
If you have all the right conditions, habitat/weather/predator control/etc./etc./etc. the SD example shows it can work.
Sadly, I do not believe the habitat part of the equation will ever be met now. Those were way different agricultural times around the turn of the century.
IMO it's a very expensive way to build wild bird populations. Mortality is extremely high, but extremely high is not 100%. "Nearly 100%" is the same as "not 100%". I was at a released bird place one February with some customers. When we pulled in the evening before the hunt there were a few chukar out on a wheat field. We commented on it when we checked in because I'd never known this place to use chukars. They said that chukars had been released in like October for a hunt and had managed to survive into February. Anecdotes like that exist for pheasants. But more generally, if the habitat is good and there is seed stock of wild populations, the wild birds will do it themselves, eventually. Or so we're told.
However, would it be possible to release a bunch of hens on March 15 and hope to get a couple of broods from them that you might not otherwise have? I think it could happen and you'd be hard pressed to convince me that it's impossible.
The "gene pool" argument could perhaps go both ways. Isolated, small populations of other species sometimes suffer from lack of genetic diversity. Maybe it's possible that our fragmented, disappearing habitat for upland birds is producing limited genetic diversity in native stock. Maybe even one or two successful broods from released birds could mitigate this issue temporarily? A theoretical discussion for sure, and one I'm not qualified to participate in seriously.
And then there are "surrogators"...
However, would it be possible to release a bunch of hens on March 15 and hope to get a couple of broods from them that you might not otherwise have? I think it could happen and you'd be hard pressed to convince me that it's impossible.
The "gene pool" argument could perhaps go both ways. Isolated, small populations of other species sometimes suffer from lack of genetic diversity. Maybe it's possible that our fragmented, disappearing habitat for upland birds is producing limited genetic diversity in native stock. Maybe even one or two successful broods from released birds could mitigate this issue temporarily? A theoretical discussion for sure, and one I'm not qualified to participate in seriously.
And then there are "surrogators"...