How Sampling-Based Overdispersion Undermines India’s Tiger Monitoring Orthodoxy

Abstract

&#Conservation agencies entrusted with recovery of iconic mammals may '# exaggerate population trends without adequate scientific evidence. Recently, (# such populations were termed as 'political populations' in the conservation )# literature. We surmise that political populations emerge when agencies are *# pressured to report abundances at large spatial scales for species that are +# difficult to survey. Indian tiger conservation agencies use an experimental ,# approach called double-sampling using index-calibration models.

India’s tigers seem to be a massive success story — many scientists aren’t sure

“…The description of the methodology and models used is "vague", and the resulting numbers have "higher uncertainties than are currently reported", says Arjun Gopalaswamy, a statistical ecologist and science adviser at the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York City. He has authored two studies critiquing the census method 2,3 .…”