Date: 4/15/21

To: UN Conservation Monitoring Centre

From: Evan Haithcock
Subject: Estimating Animal Species Populations Memo
Reference: Follow up on last week’s meta-analysis of conservation studies
Action Required: Contact and set up a meeting with Dr. Ida Schnell.
Distribution List: UN Environment Programme

This report reviews issues that have been arising in the accuracy of conservation techniques
aimed at estimating the size of a given animal species’ population. This follows from a meta-
analysis of studies estimating population sizes, which found a large discrepancy in estimations of
many endangered animal populations. This data indicates a major issue in techniques used for
these studies, especially those techniques used for the most at-risk species. As such, we hope to
provide insight on common techniques for estimating a population’s size to provide better data
for the UNEP to use in decision making and trend analysis.

Summary
Predicting the size of a given species’ population is incredibly difficult, mainly due to issues of
accessibility of remote locations. However, there are a few families of techniques that rely on
rigorous mathematics and statistics to ensure that species estimates are as accurate as possible
while reducing costs and environmental impacts. Methods that do not directly interact with the
species being counted show a lot of promise, especially for counts of endangered animals that
may be threatened by close contact with humans. This realization helps to inform ecological
research recommendations that will be distributed to the greater scientific community. We thus
recommend meeting with researchers in this field to better understand what direction these
methods are going in and how we can incorporate them into our work.

Old and New Estimation Techniques

Why Estimation Can Be So Difficult
Traditional census methods used in modern-day governments unfortunately cannot be applied to
ecological studies for four main reasons. First, it is important to realize that, aside from a few
small cases, it is impossible to observe every individual organism in a species at one time. If
instead a marker was placed on each organism in a species to mitigate this issue, the cost of the
study would be far too expensive and resources would be depleted far too quickly. And on top of
that, the damage done to an ecosystem to pursue such an effort would far outweigh the
advantages of the study. And finally, even when all of these issues are solved, a direct count of
organisms in a species is rarely ever as accurate as it needs to be. Thus, a population count
cannot rely on directly counting each organism.

Methods We Know Work

The methods that we know are accurate fall into three main families of techniques:
 Incomplete Counting: An incomplete count is a method in which a small part of a
population is counted and then extrapolated to the population at large (Sutherland). It is
similar in process to directly counting the population, but the scope is limited to a very
small area and then this data is extended to the entire ecosystem using some typically
very complicated mathematical models. These methods tend to be rather resource heavy
and are the least common of the three families for this reason.
 The Mark-Recapture Technique: Perhaps the most widely used method type today,
mark-recapture methods involve capturing a random set of animals, marking them,
setting them free, and then recapturing another random sample of the same species
(Sutherland). The number of marked animals found in the recapture step serves as an
indicator of how dense or sparse the population is. However, these can be expensive
depending on the markers used, environments or animals studied, etc. Additionally, they
place the animals in close contact with humans, putting their lives in even more danger.
 Indirect Counting: This method makes use of a variety of different indicators that
animals leave behind (e.g., fecal pellets, footprints, homes/dens, etc.) to learn about the
general trends of population size among certain species (Sutherland). This is the least
invasive and least expensive of the three methods but is currently more suited to showing
the trends of a population rather than an estimation of its size.
These methods can reduce costs and resources so much because of their reliance on math and
statistics, allowing a guess to often be more accurate than an “exact” count.

Promising Methods
While all three of these methods are generally cheap and effective, indirect counting methods
seem to be the most promising for our studies. Not only do they mitigate all of the common
issues these techniques have, but there are also a lot of new methods for carrying out these tests
that are being developed. For example, there are a few scientists looking at using genetic data
found in leeches to estimate a population’s size (Schnell). However, there is a severe lack of
research into innovative methods like these, and data from these studies cannot be used in our
calculations because of such a lack of knowledge.

Conclusion
While estimating population sizes can be a very tricky process, there are three major families of
techniques that give us accurate estimations without requiring too much time or resources, doing
so by taking advantage of clever mathematical tricks. Of these, indirect techniques are the most
promising for the purposes of studying endangered species, as they put the species being studied
at a much lower risk than the other methods. Additionally, there is a lot of new and innovative
methods for performing an indirect count estimation, meaning there are a lot of opportunities to
improve the accuracy of our current data. Despite this, there is a lack of research into how these
methods work on a grander scale, and more research is needed before these can be integrated
into the datasets we currently use.

Recommendations
We recommend setting up a meeting with Dr. Ida Schnell and her team to discuss the viability of
her research in our analyses. From here, we can determine if her estimation methods are able to
be incorporated in the current models we have set up, and if so, begin using them. If this seems
to improve our accuracy, it may be help to invest funding into this type of research so we can
begin developing a larger basis of this type of data.

References
Schnell, Ida, et al. “Screening Mammal Biodiversity using DNA from leeches.” Current Biology,
vol. 22, no. 20, 23 Oct. 2012.
Sutherland, William. Ecological Census Techniques: A Handbook. 2nd ed., E-book, Cambridge
University Press, 2006.
http://www.ecolab.bas.bg/main/Members/snikolov/Sutherland_2006_Ecological_Census
_Techniques.pdf