Impact of wildlife culling on the behaviour of a highly social herbivore

Wildlife culling is used to control overabundant populations of animals, particularly herbivores, and can be an effective yet controversial management tool. While the ecological outcome of culling has been extensively studied, little research has been done on the behavioural impacts of culling on the animals remaining in the population. We intensively studied multiple populations of eastern grey kangaroos (Macropus giganteus) in the weeks immediately before and after an annual cull to examine how culling affects the behaviour of remaining animals. While the cull reduced overall population numbers by 30-60%, there was little impact on group sizes of individual kangaroos within populations, a first pass indicator of sociality. The proportion of kangaroos observed being vigilant increased by 70% in the weeks following the month-long culling event, but there was no discernible change in any other behaviour (foraging, resting or reproductive behaviour). In particular, there was no increase i..., , # Impact of wildlife culling on the behaviour of a highly social herbivore

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.9p8cz8wvm](10.5061/dryad.9p8cz8wvm)

## Description of the data and file structure

This paper reports one of the first studies evaluating the behavioural impacts of a conservation cull on wild populations of large herbivore, the eastern grey kangaroo.

## Description of the data and file structure 

The file is a csv file that can be opened using any text, spreadsheet or statistical program.

### Sheet 1: Population

This sheet contains data visually observed during in-person observation sessions.

#### Column Headings

Cull/control

* Whether the site in question was a cull site (i.e. a site where culling was conducted in 2023) or a control site (i.e. a site where culling was not conducted in 2023).

Pre/post

* Whether the observation in question was taken before or after the 2023 cull.

Location

* The location (site) at which the observation was taken.

Date

* The date the ...,