While wildlife damages are a relatively small part of crop insurance claims in the United States, reported damages from wildlife are growing and producers are concerned this issue is getting worse. Wildlife agencies advocate for hunting as a control to wildlife damages to crops but to our knowledge, no study has econometrically explored if hunting could reduce crop damage. Therefore, we analyze if county-level white-tailed deer () harvest and other factors like habitat and field fragmentation are associated with corn and soybean acres being indemnified due to wildlife damages in Tennessee. We estimate a fractional probit model using crop insurance data to measure crop damages and a county-level white-tailed deer harvest dataset. We find a higher coverage level of a policy increases the likelihood of both corn and soybean acres being indemnified due to wildlife damage. We also find white-tailed deer harvest during the period post-harvest in the previous crop year (November through January) slightly decreases the likelihood of a claim being made due to wildlife damage for corn but was not found to mitigate losses to soybeans. The whitetail hunting season appears to align better with corn production to reduce crop losses than with soybeans. This study will be useful for wildlife and crop agencies in state and federal governments to develop policies to more effectively utilize hunting to reduce crop insurance claims from wildlife damages.

中文翻译：

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不受欢迎的客人：鹿收获对玉米和大豆野生动物损害的影响


虽然野生动物造成的损失在美国农作物保险索赔中所占的比例相对较小，但据报道，野生动物造成的损失正在增加，生产者担心这个问题正在变得越来越严重。野生动物机构​​主张通过狩猎来控制野生动物对农作物的损害，但据我们所知，还没有研究通过计量经济学探讨狩猎是否可以减少农作物的损害。因此，我们分析了县级白尾鹿的收获以及栖息地和田地破碎化等其他因素是否与田纳西州因野生动物损害而受到赔偿的玉米和大豆面积有关。我们使用农作物保险数据来衡量农作物损失和县级白尾鹿收获数据集来估计分数概率模型。我们发现，政策的覆盖范围越高，玉米和大豆面积因野生动物损害而获得赔偿的可能性就越大。我们还发现，上一作物年度收获后期间（11​​ 月至 1 月）白尾鹿的收获略微降低了因野生动物对玉米造成的损害而提出索赔的可能性，但并未发现可以减轻大豆损失。与大豆相比，白尾鱼狩猎季节似乎更适合玉米生产，以减少作物损失。这项研究将有助于州和联邦政府的野生动物和农作物机构制定政策，更有效地利用狩猎来减少野生动物损害造成的农作物保险索赔。