Effects of scale on hunter moose Alces alces observation rate

• Published in: Wildlife Biology
• Main Author: Sylvén, Susanne
• Other Authors: Sveriges Lantbruksuniversitet, Naturvårdsverket, Svenska Jägareförbundet
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 2000
• Subjects: Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law; Nature and Landscape Conservation; Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics; Alces alces
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.2981/wlb.2000.011; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full-xml/10.2981/wlb.2000.011; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.2981/wlb.2000.011

Effects of sampling/observation area size on correlations between hunter moose Alces alces observation rates and moose density estimates have been evaluated. Each correlation between observation rates and moose density estimates was examined to discover extreme values strongly influencing correlations due to small sample sizes. The results of my study suggested that hunter observation rates were affected by sampling area size. Correlations between observation rates and moose densities indicate that there is a positive asymptotic relationship between hunter observation rate accuracy and sampling area, i.e. as the sampling area increases, so does the accuracy of the hunter observation rate. It was concluded that the accuracy of density estimates could be improved by using hunter observation rates obtained in sampling areas larger than 500 km 2 . The concordance between moose counts and densities at this sampling area size was intermediate (r s = 0.5–0.7). It is suggested that estimates of smaller management units may be improved when using year‐to‐year surveys at sampling within homogeneous management units. However, the confidence intervals are generally wide, and moose regulation authorities using hunter observation rates as a moose density estimator will have to accept estimates with a relatively low precision.