1 Tahrcountry Musings: Can the abundance of tigers be assessed from their Signs? A New Paper

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Can the abundance of tigers be assessed from their Signs? A New Paper

The paper “Can the abundance of tigers be assessed from their signs?, authored by Yadvendradev Jhala, Qamar Qureshi and Rajesh Gopal , published in Journal of Applied Ecology is  worth a read by all wildlifers  dealing with tiger conservation.
The authors assess the utility of indices for estimating the abundance of the endangered tiger at landscape scales and come up with a winner. It offers cost effective and rapid methods for estimating abundance of endangered species across large landscapes.

The researchers  used double sampling to estimate two indices of tiger abundance (encounters of pugmarks and scats per km searched) and calibrate those indices against contemporaneous estimates of tiger densities obtained using camera-trap mark–recapture (CTMR) at 21 sites (5185 km2) in Central and North India.

The new model developed permit rapid and cost effective assessments of abundance to monitor the status of tigers at landscape scales. The researchers have certainly done a commendable job.

1 comment:

Ramesh said...

It certainly is cheaper than camera trap