Monitoring Threatened Species and Ecological Communities

2 – A framework for evaluating the adequacy of monitoring programs for threatened species^19

Metric 9: Demographic parameters

Monitoring programs should involve assessment of critical demographic
parameters, rather than relative abundance alone. Some monitoring programs that
consider relative abundance alone may be adequate for the management objective.
However, a monitoring program that also measures important life history
parameters (such as reproductive success, population age and sex composition,
mortality and its causes) may provide substantially more ecological insight and
allow management to most acutely target weak points in the species’ biology or
identify demographic stages that may most benefit from management intervention.

Score Score basis

5 monitoring program includes detailed assessment of relevant life history parameters

(such as reproductive success, mortality rates and their causes), which can identify weak

points in biology and interventions for management action, and monitoring data allow

predictive population modelling

4 monitoring includes reliable information on at least one relevant life history parameter

3 monitoring includes some consideration of at least one relevant life history parameter

2 monitoring parameters are restricted to incidence or abundance, but in a manner that

may allow reasonable inference about some life history parameters

1 monitoring parameters are restricted to incidence or abundance

0 no monitoring

Acknowledgements

I thank the editors for inviting this contribution, Craig Moritz for comments on a
draft, and Andrew Burbidge, Peter Harrison, Stephen Garnett and Sarah Legge for
input into these metrics.

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