Reconciling economic and ecological sustainability: can non-intensive hunting of red-legged partridges be economically profitable?

The red-legged partridge ( Alectoris rufa ) is the most important gamebird in Spain. Due to population declines in recent decades, management approaches increasingly include the release of farm-reared partridges and the establishment of so-called intensive estates, where hunting is based on put-and-take partridges. The release of farm-reared partridges is controversial because these birds negatively affect wild populations. However, according to managers, releases are necessary to maintain commercial hunting. We analysed economic parameters using data provided by 20 red-legged partridge hunting estates with different management and economic aims in central Spain. We calculated total revenues, total expenses, benefits and profitability of these estates and simulated results under two different scenarios (prices for buying farm-reared partridges being 15 % higher and prices for hunting in estates not using releases being 15 % higher) attempting to mimic the internalization of some ecological costs of farm-reared birds or possible rewards from using wild populations sustainably. Non-commercial estates ( n = 5), as expected, just broke even, with almost no benefits. Benefits of intensive estates, where massive releases throughout the hunting season allow a much higher harvest, were on average an order of magnitude higher (20,404 ± 24,413 €/km 2 , n = 8) than those of other commercial estates (1713 ± 1280 €/km 2 , n = 7). Benefits of non-intensive commercial estates using releases were on average lower than those of commercial estates without releases. In fact, profitability of non-intensive commercial estates not using releases was similar to that of intensive estates. Any of the two price scenarios considered led to non-intensive commercial estates not using releases being the most profitable on average. Thus, efforts should be made to identify ways of improving economic profitability of non-intensive estates, which may be important for promoting hunting management styles that are ecologically more beneficial.