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SOUTHERN ZONE REGIONS y 
O Northwest Coast 
© Northern Highlands 
© Yucatan Peninsula 
© Guatemala 
© Northeast Coast © El Salvador 
© Western Highlands © Honduras 
© Central Highlands © Nicaragua 
© Southern @ Costa Rica 
Fig. 13. Geographical reference areas. 
by physiography rather than political boundaries, Because 
bandings were fairly well distributed within States of the 
CMU, it is believed that the resultant recoveries grossly 
reflect distribution of harvest from each State. 
- That the pattern of direct recoveries is representative 
of the migrational distribution of the populations from the 
banding areas. Strictly speaking, this pattern reflects only 
distribution of hunting harvest because all of the recoveries 
are from hunters or hunting activity. However, because 
hunting is allowed rather uniformly throughout the migra- 
tional corridors, this assumption is basically correct. 
In addition, there are several assumptions connected with 
the stochastic models used in this analysis to determine sur- 
vival and recovery rates. These assumptions are discussed 
thoroughly by Brownie et al. (1978:6) and will not be re- 
peated here. 
Objectives of the Central Management 
Unit Banding Analysis 
The main objective of this treatise is to provide an in- 
depth analysis of the distribution, derivation, chronologi- 
cal migration, harvest rates, survival rates, and other popu- 
lation variables of mourning doves in the CMU. An early 
decision was made to confine the analysis to geographical 
units no smaller than States (with the exception of Texas). 
ll 
This treatment allows the reader to view mourning dove 
population dynamics on a broad State-by-State or regional 
basis and should enable wildlife agencies to make sound 
decisions for management of mourning doves in the CMU. 
We believe that this analysis will stimulate additional 
research in greater depth. Indeed, the abundance of infor- 
mation contained in the many tables and figures provides 
the opportunity to examine the data in more detail for local 
problem solving. In addition, our files contain the primary 
and secondary data treatment which could not be formally 
presented in this analysis because of space limitations. This 
information can also be made available in tabular form to 
interested researchers upon request. It is recognized, how- 
ever, that some managers will need even more precise data 
from specific areas. This being true, we encourage re- 
searchers to request data in the form needed from the Bird 
Banding Laboratory (BBL), Laurel, Maryland. 
Conclusions, based on the analysis, have been made 
about specific and general aspects of dove population 
dynamics to help the reader interpret the presented data. 
However, management implications and recommendations 
purposely have been omitted to allow the reader the free- 
dom to make his own decisions in this regard. 
Methods 
Reference Areas 
Banding and subsequent encounter locations originally 
were identified by coordinates of latitude and longitude. 
However, except for a summary of banding distribution 
(Fig. 8), data for all coordinates have been grouped for this 
analysis. Several artificial reference areas of the United 
States and Latin America were adopted to describe recovery 
and migrational patterns of mourning doves. The major 
regions in the United States were the three management 
units — Eastern, Central, and Western (Fig. 3). These units 
were further divided into north-south oriented tiers that 
contained similar dove migration patterns. This resulted 
in the division of the WMU into two tiers and the CMU 
into three tiers. The EMU was not divided because of its 
small contribution to the dove harvest in the CMU and 
Latin America. The tiers are herein referred to as West- 
WMU, East-WMU, West-CMU, Mid-CMU, East-CMU, 
and EMU (Fig. 13). States were retained as the smallest 
geographical entities except for the division of Texas into 
north and south zones. The two Texas divisions are treated 
as separate reference areas to differentiate the data accord- 
ing to the independent hunting regulations in each zone. 
Mexico and Central American countries are collectively 
referred to as the Southern Zone. This zone was arbitrarily 
divided into 12 geographical regions (Table A-5 and 
Fig. 13), These divisions allowed grouping of Mexican 
States into areas with similar physiographic features and 
band recovery patterns. Except for Belize (which was in- 
