Data and code for “Hunting birds for food, but not sport, associated with poorer conservation status”

Associated Paper

Hill JE, Kellner KF, Belant JL. Hunting birds for food, but not sport, associated with poorer conservation status. Biology Letters.

Abstract

Human uses of birds may contribute to extinction risk, but it remains unclear whether different uses have variable impacts on bird conservation status. We analyzed use and trade data from 3,523 bird species accounts in the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List to compare the impacts of use for food (hunted primarily for human consumption) and sport (hunted primarily for recreation) on bird conservation status. We found that species hunted for food were more likely to be listed as threatened and have declining populations compared to those not hunted for food. Sport hunted species were not more likely to have declining populations compared to non-sport hunted species and there were also no differences in threatened status. Species experiencing habitat loss and those with smaller geographic ranges had poorer conservation statuses, whereas body mass and diet had inconsistent effects. These results emphasize the negative effects of hunting for food on bird species and reiterate the need for effective management to mitigate these impacts. 

Table of Contents

• Analysis_IUCN_birds.Rmd: R markdown file containing the R code for the analysis
• Analysis_IUCN_birds.html: Analysis results compiled into an HTML file
• DatasetMay5.xlsx: Species trait and conservation status raw data
• Dockerfile: File that can optionally be used to build a Docker container containing the analysis results, aiding long term analytical reproducibility.
• Figure_1.tiff: Figure 1 file
• Makefile: File describing commands used to generate the HTML results file from the .Rmd file
• README.md: Contains this description
• Table_1.csv: Table 1 in spreadsheet format
• Table_2.csv: Table 2 in spreadsheet format
• final_data.csv: Cleaned version of data in the .xlsx file