Illegal Killing of Non-Game Wildlife in Idaho Conservation Areas, 2020

Idaho, USA conservation areas provide data on illegal and legal shooting of wildlife, primarily birds and snakes. The dataset includes telemetry, survey, and observational records, showing 33% of telemetered long-billed curlews and 59% of other found bird carcasses with known cause of death were illegally shot. It was created by Todd E. Katzner of the United States Geological Survey.

Use Cases

• Modeling spatial distributions of illegal vs. legal shooting based on telemetry and observation data.
• Analyzing mortality causes for bird populations, specifically long-billed curlews, based on carcass findings.
• Investigating the association between recreational shooting and illegal killing of non-game wildlife based on survey and observational records.
• Assessing public perception of illegal wildlife killing among recreational shooters based on preliminary survey data.

Strengths

• Includes specific mortality statistics: 33% of telemetered long-billed curlews were illegally shot.
• Provides a cause-of-death breakdown for bird carcasses: 59% of other birds with known cause were illegally shot (or 32% of total found).
• Combines multiple data collection methods: telemetry, surveys, and direct observations.

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

United States Geological Survey

Collection Method

Data gathered from telemetry, surveys, and observations.

Time Range

2020

Geography

Conservation areas in Idaho, USA