Large scale wildlife monitoring studies: statistical methods for design and analysis

Abstract Techniques for estimation of absolute abundance of wildlife populations have received a lot of attention in recent years. The statistical research has been focused on intensive small‐scale studies. Recently, however, wildlife biologists have desired to study populations of animals at very large scales for monitoring purposes. Population indices are widely used in these extensive monitoring programs because they are inexpensive compared to estimates of absolute abundance. A crucial underlying assumption is that the population index ( C ) is directly proportional to the population density ( D ). The proportionality constant, β, is simply the probability of ‘detection’ for animals in the survey. As…