Wildlife Counting. How Important Is It?

In management of wildlife, shouldn’t it be considered imperative to have accurate and reliable population counts? After all, many a lawsuit that involves millions of dollars and just as many people have been decided on data that includes herd counts, especially Endangered Species Act lawsuits.

“I’ve been in the woods for over a month now and I can tell you there are at least 100 does for every buck!” This is a comment I received one day when attempting to communicate with fellow hunters about buck to doe ratios and the management plans Maine has in monitoring and manipulating the whitetail deer populations.

Whether that statement is true or not is not really up to me to decide but when I contacted a wildlife expert, I was told that in Maine, having a buck to doe ratio of 1:100 was nearly biologically impossible unless it was intentionally skewed.

I’m sure most of you at one time or another participated in the old “count the jelly beans” contest. This is where someone fills a glass jug with jelly beans and then formulates a contest in which the one who can guess closest the number of beans in the jar wins a prize.

In this scenario, you can see the beans through the glass but because it is three dimensional and the beans are stacked from all sides, one has to envision how many groupings of a selected number exist in the jar and then do the math.

Have you ever attended a concert or any kind of large gathering of people and been asked to estimate how many people in attendance? You might apply the same principle as the jelly beans - determine the size of say 50 people and see how many chunks of 50 people there are and once again do the math.

I have friends who are wildlife biologists. Often they volunteer to go on bird counts in Mexico during migration. I’m no expert on bird counting but I recall one of them briefly describing the process. The birds are flying in mass in the same direction. At certain places, the birds enter areas where the air rises. The birds get into these rises until they reach a certain height and then fly away headed for their final migratory destination.

The biologists make a determination of how many birds can fill up this “elevator” of updrafts. Each counter picks out one bird as it enters the elevator, watches it until it reaches the top and exits. At this time the counter moves eyes back to the bottom of the elevator, picks another bird and counts “one”.

This entire process gives biologists a “count” of the number of that species of bird. I have no hard data but it might be plausible to guess the counting would be off by several thousand but when counting millions of birds, it is probably within tolerance.

In all of these cases I’ve mentioned, someone or group of people are attempting to count objects they can see, not necessarily individually but in groups, a lot of groups in some cases. So, how do we count species not in groups, not confined to small areas but spread out over huge areas of land and forests? Sometimes in the open, sometimes in dense forest?

There are several ways and not everyone uses the same methods and all produce varying degrees of accuracy. How accurate should it be?

If there are an estimated 1,000,000,000 sparrows, I’m not so sure that being real accurate on numbers is that important. On the other hand, if there is an estimated 100 of a particular “protected” species, it would seem imperative that we know exactly how many exist and where.

I can’t and won’t get into the exact methods used to count wildlife, but let me give a few examples to show the varying ways and degrees of effort put forth in determining herd counts in some states.

Let’s start first with whitetail deer in Maine. Maine has deer that live in areas throughout the entire state. Deer densities in southern Maine far exceed those in northern Maine. How do we know that? Biologists have formulated equations that by inputting data, comparing it to many years of previous data, they come up with an answer. Examples of data used would include: weather, habitat, predation, fawn survival rates, disease, hunter harvest and hunting pressure, open land, among others. The use of aerial surveys is also used but not on a regular, extensive basis. (For those interested in finding out more about how Maine manages and counts its deer herd, visit the website of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.)

Another state that is having a war over deer management is Pennsylvania. A few years back, biologists and state agencies announced that there were too many deer and as a result was destroying the habitat and creating a serious ecological imbalance. Pennsylvania began a program to reduce the deer population. Some don’t agree with the approach. The question for us today is how do they know how many deer they had and how many they have now?

The state of Pennsylvania Fish and Game offers a Deer Management Plan and an update to that that addresses the new plan of herd reduction.

From an examination of the Deer Management Plan and assuming it is being followed, we can see that Pennsylvania utilizes similar methods as Maine in counting their deer. Obviously, due to different geography and climate, certain methods are different.

I think Maine has an excellent system of data collection and utilization that gives most biologists a healthy degree of confidence in the outcome. The reality is it is still educated guessing but the key is increasing the level of confidence. When hunters discover that their biologists are producing accurate results, this level of confidence in the fish and game grows.

Gathering this information and determining how many deer live in states like Maine and Pennsylvania is good and serves not only to provide a professional means to manage the species but in so doing solves many social problems as well, i.e. keeping hunters and wildlife viewers satisfied, maintaining healthy forests, reducing human/deer encounters/accidents, etc.

But in both Maine and Pennsylvania, the whitetail deer is, for all intent and purposes, plentiful. Most people’s concerns about them involve avoiding running into them with their cars or being able to spot one occasionally in the field.

This is not the case for other species in other states. Let’s head west to Idaho. Idaho is home to mule deer, whitetail deer, elk and moose. It is also home to the gray wolf, an endangered and protected species that has created emotional conflict, to say the least.

The wolf was once native to Idaho and surrounding regions until it was nearly exterminated many years ago. The wolf had been found in northern areas of the state, having migrated down from Canada. But in 1993 and 1994, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, unloaded imported wolves into the forests of Idaho as an “experimental” population. Since that time, the wolf there has been relabeled endangered and is protected under the Endangered Species Act.

Last year the USFWS removed the wolf from protection of the ESA and immediately lawsuits were filed by no fewer than 11 environmental, animal rights and anti-hunting groups to stop the process. A judge in Montana agreed and ruled in favor of a temporary injunction to place the wolf back under federal protection.

Since that time the feds have withdrawn their original proposal to delist and are now in the process of putting forth a new delisting proposal in hopes of getting this done by the first of next year. Once again, most of the same pro wolf groups have filed suit to stop the process until the new administration (Obama’s) has taken over.

Within Idaho there are varying degrees of emotions - satisfaction, dissatisfaction, anger and happiness - over the wolf issue. Ranchers have lost livestock due to wolf predation and hunters, along with some non-hunters, are angry that the wolf is killing more elk, deer and moose. To what extent this “decimation” of elk and deer is taking place, we don’t really know or perhaps we don’t know who to believe or what is accurate.

So, we should then conclude with the amount of controversy over the wolf, the assumed destruction of elk and deer herds, the loss of ranchers’ livestock and the reduced production due to the presence of wolves, combined with the mere number of Idaho citizens directly and indirectly affected by the wolf, that Idaho must have one of the best systems in place in the country to monitor wolf, elk, deer, moose, sheep and every other kind of wildlife populations. We mustn’t forget the mere millions of dollars spent on wolf reintroduction, managing the animal once it was placed there and the countless lawsuits past, present and future. How can lawsuits be determined fairly unless Idaho’s population monitoring isn’t flawless? And how can we administer the Endangered Species Act with faulty information?

I figured then that I would see if I could find out about how Idaho Department of Fish and Game monitors its animals.

I sent an email to Brad Compton, Idaho’s big game manager, and asked him if he could explain or provide me with information that specifically explained the processes IDFG uses to count and monitor its mule deer, whitetail deer, moose, elk and wolves. This is the complete response I got.

Tom,

Idaho is currently using “Aerial Survey” to estimate mule deer, elk, moose, and bighorn sheep populations. Information on the technique is available at:

http://www.cnrhome.uidaho.edu/fishwild/Garton/tools

I couldn’t really find out anything from this link except to be able to get a download of the computer software I presume IDFG uses to tabulate the results of the endless data they must collect.

I began asking around from people in that area who have had experience with aerial surveys, wildlife management, etc. When I asked one gentleman about this response from Brad Compton, this is part of what was said.

His (Ed Garton) computer models were used to estimate deer and elk populations and harvests in the Central Idaho Wolf Recovery area in the 1993 Wolf Recovery EIS and his average overall estimate for the 20,000+ square miles exceeded known deer and elk populations in the three highest producing units in that area by more than 600%.

These were the figures presented to Congress and the general public to justify introducing Canadian wolves into Idaho.

You know what they say about computers and the programs designed to run on them? Garbage in, garbage out. If it was true that deer and elk populations were inflated by 600%, was this the fault of the computer program, the information used in the program or a combination of both?

It didn’t take long before I came to the conclusion that Idaho relies very heavily on aerial surveys to estimate game populations. I also began finding out that aerial surveys alone may not be very accurate and can lead to some serious problems involving game management.

Articles archived in the Lewiston Tribune from 1997 and 1998 offer a disturbing revelation. In the Clearwater Region it was feared that elk took a hard hit from the deep snows of 1996-97. The then regional manager said nothing they had found indicated anything out of the “normal” range.

“There’s no doubt we had some losses,” Crenshaw said, “but we haven’t seen anything to suggest it’s outside the normal range.”
About 5 to 10 percent of the elk herd dies off during the winter most years, Crenshaw said, adding this year’s losses might be pushing that upper end of the range.

He further went on to explain that he didn’t predict that there would be any changes to the number of elk permits to be issued for hunting in the coming fall. That was in May.

In December of that same year, 1997, hunters began complaining that the Clearwater Region didn’t have any elk in it. Also from the Lewiston Tribune:

Some Clearwater Region hunters have complained about finding fewer elk this fall, particularly in units around Dworshak Reservoir. Hunter success also was off in that region. Aerial and ground surveys of elk in northern units of the Clearwater Region last spring showed no signs of unusual winter kill.

Two months later in Feb. 2008, the Tribune reported that IDFG was reporting elk numbers in the Clearwater Region had dropped drastically since 1994 and blamed it on the severe winter of 1996-97. The total number of elk had been cut in half. These is the kinds of discrepancies that drive sportsmen nuts.

Aside from the computer software link Mr. Compton gave me, I found that Idaho Fish and Game website provides a Mule Deer Management Plan. Hoping to find more precise methods used to count deer and elk, I really only found a brief reference to something called, “sightability model”.

Because not all animals are observed during aerial surveys (Caughley 1974), IDFG developed a “sightability model” that corrects for those deer not observed (Unsworth et. al. 1994). Beginning in the mid-1990s, annual aerial surveys, using the “sightability model,” were conducted on 28 discrete winter ranges across southern Idaho. These winter range surveys provided reliable information on population composition, but were inadequate for determining overall abundance. Additionally, limiting monitoring to these winter ranges failed to detect potential changes occurring on the many smaller or peripheral winter ranges throughout Idaho.(I provided the hyperlink)

In theory, what this “sightability model” does is correct for what animals, and in this cited case, elk, are not seen in an aerial survey. This sightability model may not be accurate but will account to some degree on the number of elk counted. The model has to take into consideration as many factors that will effect the habits of the elk due to weather, ground conditions, time of year, terrain, habitat, etc. I would suppose one could say that the model is only as good as the data that gets dumped into it, provided of course that the basic model is sound.

I have communicated quite extensively with one man who has years of experience in aerial surveys and understands them well. He also shared thoughts with me about “sightability models”.

Instead of counting only under ideal conditions - or skipping the count that year if such conditions did not exist - IDFG Research Biologists spent years designing and re-designing this so-called “sightability” model in which the biologist enters a combination of data including precipitation, cloud cover, type of vegetation, snow cover, etc. to estimate the percentage of animals that exist versus those that were observed. In my experience almost every version of such a sightability model exaggerates the number of bucks and bulls or fawns and calves, and does nothing to improve the inability of a desk-bound biologist to spot and count wild animals - especially under less-than-ideal conditions. In my opinion, aerial counting under less than ideal conditions is a waste of time and sportsmen’s license money. Yet in many, but not all, areas it is possible to achieve up to 95% accuracy under the proper ideal count conditions. Accurate counts conducted every few years combined with accurate hunter harvest reports and other data provides far more accuracy than IDFG’s “sightability” surveys.

In the Idaho Mule Deer Management Plan, it states that in the future the department needs to develop a monitoring plan that uses less aerial surveys. This would seem to run contradictory to the statement made above by one experienced aerial surveyor.

I always hear from hunters disgruntled with the management efforts of fish and game biologists. The degree of distrust between hunter and biologist varies greatly from state to state and I believe this to be directly proportional to the trust factor or level of confidence I spoke of earlier. But we cannot disregard the evidence presented to us by those on the ground.

Many biologists that I have spoken with tell me that they put a lot of credibility in what the experienced hunters, guides, trappers, etc. are telling them they are seeing. After all, they are often the only eyes and ears on the ground in the woods and fields. To disregard this information would be foolhardy.

I also came across a person who has become part of a group of sportsmen who have decided to take a little game management into their own hands. About 12 years ago, a group of sportsmen and pilots began doing their own aerial surveys utilizing trained surveyors. This happened due to continued frustration on the part of the sportsmen that IDFG was attempting to do their own surveys with untrained personnel and coming up with data on herd populations that didn’t satisfy them from what they were observing on the ground. As one member of this group told me, “Around here we fly year around and spot what little game is left. You don’t just do it for a couple weeks in the year and then go back to your computer.”

The same gentleman told me that their frustration level grew when IDFG was reporting there were 5,000 elk in the zones they fly on a regular bases. This group had recorded their own count of 2,000 elk in two zones. They finally convinced IDFG to fly these two wildlife units and they counted 1,900 elk.

What was pointed out to me also was that with this effort of doing aerial surveys of their own, they have been able to convince IDFG to reduce elk tags in order to get the population of elk back up and they have since seen marked improvement. This is a direct result of accurate population monitoring and being able to adjust management tactics to meet known needs.

I digress to my original question about how important it is to have accurate information especially in regards to Idaho and their controversial problems with wolves and claims by sportsmen that the wolves are killing off all the deer and elk.

I have no way of really knowing exactly everything IDFG does to monitor their herds but I’ve presented some examples that certainly seem to prove that what is getting reported isn’t matching what’s on the ground.

Can we then have much confidence that data being presented is accurate? And if that confidence is low, how can a court rightfully pass judgment on the wolf and directly affect the lives of Idaho’s citizens based on guess work?

Wouldn’t it be historic if one of these judges, instead of overstepping their legal bounds and disregarding science in passing judgment, would go the other way and order the federal government and all those who filed the lawsuits to pony up the money and have a complete audit done of Idaho’s elk, deer, moose, sheep and wolf populations. Would we then not have answered the real questions and faced the issue head on?

Better yet, why not require the Department of Interior i.e. the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in conjunction with anyone proposing a listing of any species, first spend the money to do a complete audit before any consideration can be given for listing?

Tom Remington

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