Sustainable trophy hunting of Iberian ibex

Selective hunting practices, such as trophy hunting, remove individuals with specific phenotypes (Kuparinen & Festa-Bianchet 2017). For mountain ungulates, trophy hunting involves the selective harvest of males with large horns. Trophy hunters usually pay a substantial fee, which in some cases is proportional to the 'trophy score' of the animal they harvest. Trophy hunting can generate important revenues for the conservation of ungulate populations (Leader-Williams 2009). For example, a conservation program based on limited trophy hunting succeeded in increasing the population of the endangered markhor (Capra falconeri) from 200 to 3,500 in Pakistan (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 2014). If poorly regulated, however, this activity can adversely affects the population dynamics, genetic diversity and evolution of the target species (Mysterud 2014).