Patch‐scale culls of an overabundant bird defeated by immediate recolonization

). Some ecologists recommend culling as the only management response capable of timely reversal of declines of threatened small woodland birds. We monitored Noisy Miner abundance before and for 12 months after a culling program and found that immediate recolonization from the surrounding landscape negated the impact of the cull. We hypothesize that this is due to a vacuum effect; whereby, birds resident in more marginal habitat around treatment patches move into the vacant territory post-cull. Modeled mean abundance of Noisy Miners declined by 22% in treatment sites compared to an increase of 4% in control sites in the post-cull period. Abundance in all sites, however, remained three to five times higher than published ecological impact thresholds. Return on investment analysis indicated no relationship between culling effort and reduction in Noisy Miner abundance. We conclude that culling at a patch scale is not an efficient method of reducing Noisy Miner abundance to levels unlikely to impact threatened woodland birds in the highly modified study landscape, despite estimated costs 18 times lower than another potential management response of revegetation. Our study highlights the importance of building empirical evidence before intuitively attractive but not necessarily ecologically effective management responses are applied more widely.