DEMOGRAPHIC MANUAL AND ANALYSIS TOOLSMonitoring demographic indicators is a large part of wildlife management, which means that there is experience and knowledge for other members of the deer family besides caribou. The indicators typically monitored are abundance, fecundity, mortality, recruitment, sex ratio, emigration and immigration. We recognize that agencies have historically taken different approaches for monitoring caribou herds in order to operate within constraints imposed by budgets, staffing, weather, day length, aircraft availability and remoteness of the caribou. This manual offers an overview of monitoring methods applied to migratory tundra caribou. The protocols associated with this manual give details on how to report on the monitoring of demographic indices which differs from the approach used in the CARMA health and condition manual and protocols. In that manual, we describe the standardized measurements required to ensure that the same indicators are measured in the same way to minimize variation in the data (essentially Standard Operating Procedures). However for demographic indices, rather than specifying which method is to be applied, CARMA requests details about the methods used for the different herds or different regions, and rather than raw data ( such as transect counts), mean values of indices and estimates of precision are preferred. In the protocols, drop-down menus and column headings list the information required and the body of the protocols contains an explanation of the reporting requirements. In recognition of how busy field biologists tend to be, we have included some spreadsheet routines to facilitate calculating variance for sex and age ratios and rates of change. Download the demography manual.
Within the manual we describe 3 spreadsheet tools: 1. Determining the precision of composition estimates |
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