AbstractBy 1995, Ireland’s wild grey partridge (Perdix perdix) was extinct nationally as a breeding species on farmland. The two populations remaining were confined to Ireland’s industrial cutaway peat bogs. One of these populations was deemed viable. In 1996, the National Parks and Wildlife Service of Ireland and the Irish Grey Partridge Conservation Trust established a conservation project to prevent the extirpation of this population. In this paper, we explore the impact of each management factor on two key demographic response variables: chick survival rates and the number of breeding pairs. The numbers of linear metres of nesting strips had the most significantly positive effect on spring pairs, followed by the total number of supplementary food hoppers and the total hectares of brood-rearing and over-winter cover. Counterintuitively, encounters with Hen Harriers (Circus cyaneus) did not negatively affect chick survival or the number of spring pairs. While we cannot rule out the contribution of each explanatory variable, none had a statistically significant effect on chick survival, suggesting there may be locally confounding factors that our model could not capture. The weather conditions during the peak hatching period had a significant influence on chick survival, with the average maximum temperature observed in June having the strongest positive association with an increase of 1 °C in the average maximum temperature in June associated with an increase in chick survival of 9.4% on average. Conversely, for every additional 1 mm of rain in June, there was a 0.23% drop in chick survival on average.
Coexistence without conflict, the recovery of Ireland’s endangered wild grey partridge Perdix perdix
