IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group - Digital Cat Library |
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| Jhala, Y.V.; Qureshi, Q.; Gopal, R.; Amin, R. | |
| Field Guide: Monitoring tigers, co-predators, prey and their habitats | |
| 2013 Full Book | |
The objective of this field guide is to communicate field friendly standardized protocols for data collection for the front line staff and officers of the forest department. The data when analyzed would provide a scientific basis for assessing the status of tigers, other carnivores, prey species and their habitat. To this end the first two editions of 2005 and 2009 served their purpose. In this third edition, we incorporate the experience of the first two cycles of assessment for the entire country done during 2006-2010. The periodicity of four years for assessing the status of tigers and sympatric carnivores at the scale of the entire country was found to be rather long for monitoring source populations. We recommend that the source populations (Tiger reserves and Protected Areas) be monitored on a seasonal or annual cycle. Based on earlier experience some of the data forms are marginally modified to meet the data requirements for the country wide monitoring and a new data forms added for monitoring source populations. The entire set of protocols in this field guide need to be completed for source population monitoring while all except two (the information from track plot and patrol data) needs to be implemented for the country wide monitoring done every four years. The field guide serves as a cook book for data collection protocols on carnivore occupancy (data sheet 1), prey abundance (data sheet 2 & 4), human impacts on the habitat (datasheet 3B) and habitat status (data sheet 3A & 3C). A user friendly data entry and analysis software is provided separately to accompany this field guide in an attempt to make data entry error free and permit the wildlife managers to use their data locally for management purposes. When the protocols outlined in this field guide are followed and data analyzed the wildlife manager will have reliable information on carnivore species occupancy in time and space (at the resolution of a beat and any higher scale), abundance and change in prey species status, trends in and areas of impact by human activities, and habitat status and changes therein over a specified timescale. |
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(c) IUCN/SSC Cat Specialist Group ( IUCN - The World Conservation Union) |