Capture-recapture and Removal Methods for Sampling Closed Populations

Book excerpt: The problem of estimating animal abundance is common in wildlife management and environmental impact assessment. Capture-recapture and removal methods are often used to estimate population size. Statistical Inference From Capture Data On Closed Animal Populations, a monograph by Otis et al. (1978), provides us with a comprehensive synthesis of much of the wildlife and statistical literature on the methods, as well as some extensions of the general theory. In our primer, we focus on capture-recapture and removal methods for trapping studies in which a population is assumed to be closed and do not treat open-population models, such as the Jolly-Seber model, or catch-effort methods in any detail. The primer, written for students interested in population estimation, is intended for use with the more theoretical monograph.