| Abstract: | Managers of wildlife populations commonly rely on indirect, count-based measures of the population in making decisions regarding conservation, harvest, or control. The main appeal in the use of such counts is their low material expense compared to methods that directly measure the population. However, their correct use rests on the rarely-tested but often-assumed premise that they proportionately reflect population size, i.e., that they constitute a population index. This study investigates forest management for the endangered Red-cockaded Woodpecker (Picoides borealis) and the Wood Thrush (Hylocichla mustelina) at the Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge in central Georgia, U.S.A. Optimal decision policies for a joint species objective were derived for two alternative models of Wood Thrush population dynamics. Policies were simulated under scenarios of unbiasedness, consistent negative bias, and habitat-dependent negative bias in observed Wood Thrush densities. Differences in simulation outcomes between biased and unbiased detection scenarios indicated the expected loss in resource objectives (here, forest habitat and birds) through decision-making based on biased population counts. Given the models and objective function used in our analysis, expected losses were as great as 11%, a degree of loss perhaps not trivial for applications such as endangered species management. Our analysis demonstrates that costs of uncertainty about the relationship between the population and its observation can be measured in units of the resource, costs which may offset apparent savings achieved by collecting uncorrected population counts. |
| Genre: | Article |
| ProdID: | 5224433 |
| Citation Author: | Moore, C. T.; Kendall, W. L. |
| Citation Contributing Office: | Patuxent Wildlife Research Center |
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| Citation End Page: | 296 |
| Citation Issue: | 1 |
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| Citation Language: | English |
| Citation Larger Work Title: | Animal Biodiversity and Conservation |
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| Citation Number Of Pages: | 10 |
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| Citation Phsyical Description: | 287-296 |
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| Citation Public Comments: | Proceedings of the International Conference EURING 2003, held in Radolfzell (Germany) from 6th-10th October 2003. The conference focused on the quantitative study of marked individuals in ecology, evolution and conservation biology, and there were ten sessions. Full text of the individual paper is available from the first URL. The whole journal from the second URL. 6320_Moore.pdf |
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| Citation Search Results Text: | Costs of detection bias in index-based population monitoring; 2004; Article; Journal; Animal Biodiversity and Conservation; Moore, C. T.; Kendall, W. L. |
| Citation Start Page: | 287 |
| Citation Volume: | 27 |
| Citation Year: | 2004 |
| Type: | citation/reference |
| Text: | Costs of detection bias in index-based population monitoring; 2004; Article; Journal; Animal Biodiversity and Conservation; Moore, C. T.; Kendall, W. L. |
| URL (THUMBNAIL): | http://pubs.er.usgs.gov/thumbnails/outside_thumb.jpg |
| URL (DOCUMENT): | http://www.bcn.es/museuciencies_fitxers/imatges/FitxerContingut4803.pdf ; http://w10.bcn.es/APPS/wprmuseuciencies/Museu.GeneradorPagines?idioma=3&seccio=11_1_8 |
| Date Other: | Wed, 16 Jun 2010 12:18 -0500 |
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