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Balme, G.
Counting cats
2005 Africa Geographic: 36-43
For the most part, it is impossible to conduct direct counts of large cats like lions, leopards and cheetahs. For counting them scientists apply a variety of indirect methods which combine ancient skills like tracking or the reconstruction of activity from the spoor of animals with the most current technology and scientific theory. The use of tracks has been refined in a method known as the scent-station survey which eliminates some of the variation in track counts by attracting cats to a series of counting stations. Further methods are faecal analysis and telemetry, but the most accurate estimations of numbers are obtained by camera-trapping. With the relentless pressure of habitat destruction and persecutions, it is critical that researchers have at their disposal reliable, repeatable and cost-efficient methods for estimating felid abundance.
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