BODY CONDITION MANUAL AND PROTOCOLSThe CARMA Network is acting as a forum for documenting and assembling indicators to monitor caribou and their environment. CARMA is taking the lead to describe monitoring indicators in a manual that also includes standardized protocols from previous studies on Rangifer and other cervids and newly developed protocols relevant to community and hunter evaluation. The manual and protocols will ensure that we are collecting and managing data in a comparable way. The target audience for the manual is technical staff (biologists, wildlife technicians, fish and wildlife officers) and researchers that are affiliated with the CARMA Network. The standardized monitoring data will be used to report on the status and trends in barren-ground caribou (wild reindeer and caribou) in the circumpolar regions. This manual describes monitoring at the scale of the individual caribou and is focused on health and physical condition. Although information is collected at one scale, it can be integrated and interpreted at another scale. For example, hunters observe how fat individual caribou are, and the information from hunters in all communities is compiled to rate the body condition (based on fat) of the herd in that particular year. These standards will be periodically updated. Rangifer body condition manual (Download) The actual field protocols are presented at two levels. Level 1 is the simplest approach to monitoring, methods that can be performed by hunters after minimal training. Level 2 protocols are more intensive monitoring and require trained staff to collect and document the health and condition of individual caribou. Level 1 Protocols (Download)
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