IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group - Digital Cat Library |
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| Gupta, S. | |
| Ecology of medium and small sized carnivores in Sariska Tiger Reserve, Rajasthan, India | |
| 2011 Full Book | |
To assess wildlife population trends, scientifically based monitoring programs must be carried out. For species that occur in very low densities, nocturnal and shy, direct observations of animals are not possible. Moreover, monitoring cryptic wildlife species is often difficult or impossible. A new generation of camera traps and the use of well developed capture-recapture models have led to an increase in the use of remote surveying and monitoring methodologies for nocturnal species. Population estimates can be done for individually identifiable cryptic nocturnal species through camera trap. However, recent advances in 'occupancy modeling' of animal presence data derived from photographic captures might provide solutions to the problems of monitoring such species. A specific occupancy approach - the Royle and Nichols (2003) model, allows reliable estimation of abundance at best, and of an index of abundance or occupancy rate at the least, without the need for individual identification of animals. It may be used to estimate abundance of elusive and nocturnal medium and small sized species with photographic capture data derived using camera traps. In this study, both capture - recapture method and Royle -Nichols (2003) approach was applied to photographic capture trap data to estimate density and abundance of nocturnal cryptic species. Scat analysis was used to understand food habits and presence/absence data obtained from camera trapping was used to develop habitat suitability map for the study species such as striped hyena (_Hyaena hyaena_), jungle cat (_Felis chaus_), jackal (_Camis aureus_), ratel (_Mellivora capensis_), palm civet (_Paradoxurus hermaphroditus_), small Indian civet (_Viverricula indica_), common grey mongoose (_Hespestes edwardsii_) and ruddy mongoose (_Hespestes smitii_). The study was carried out in Sariska Tiger Reserve (STR), western Rajasthan, India, from November 2007 to June 2009. |
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