Abstract
Science, statistics and surveys: a herpetological perspective.
Highlights
Bridging the gap between conservation science and conservation practice is a widely acknowledged issue in applied ecology (Hulme 2011)
Statistically defensible population assessments really helpful when it comes to conservation decision-making? Could their application divert resources away from more pressing issues? Exactly what type of evidence is needed for population assessment? In 2011–2012, we held five knowledge exchange workshops in England, Wales and Scotland to explore these issues with professional conservation practitioners
Conservation recommendations that stem from population assessments require baseline or control data allowing a measure of population change
Summary
Can allow rapid population assessments Some software available that accounts for detectability (e.g. Distance). Two main issues emerged for this: (i) the relatively intensive survey effort required for obtaining individual capture histories to generate meaningful models; (ii) the usefulness of this type of information for conservation purposes. The emergence of N-mixture models that can produce estimates of population size using spatially replicated counts has potential to improve the situation (Royle 2004), and deserves wider attention within professional practice. Established guidance exists for great crested newts (English Nature 2001) and states that, as a guide, five nights of trapping with no captures indicate that a reasonable effort has been made to remove all animals from a particular area Replacing such ‘rules of thumb’ with catch depletion models has strong potential to determine whether the removal is effective, and was viewed as a high priority by practitioners at the workshops. Models that include covariates of detection could prove invaluable in reducing the number of exercises that involve ‘false depletions’ due to, for example, periods of inclement weather affecting capture rates
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