It is very difficult to count on the population of wildlife. It requires the cooperation of many people and much of financial support. But why do we need to know their number? To protect certain species, we need to know the population trend to determine whether a population in the area is decreasing, increasing or stable. It is also important to know the impact of human activities during the survey.

Animals live in vast area of wilderness. There are high mountains, wetlands, dense woodlands and rivers. Humans also use lands. Some areas belong to a country as national parks, others are owned by individuals. Indigenous people also have their lands. There are many cases that researchers need the permission from land owners to start survey. Besides some animals migrate to search for food; others stay in one place but hiding most of the time or nocturnal. Therefore we have to use the most effective way to count animals’ population.

Various ways to count

One way is dividing the study area into a grid and counts animals within one grid.

Each species requires unique way to obtain their accurate population size. In the case of apes the researchers count nests and dungs. For grizzly bears collecting hair is the one method to identify individual bears in the area after DNA analysis. It is also necessary to know the population of various prey species in the area when counting the population of carnivore such as lions and leopards.