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One of the aims of this study was to identify, and assess, different potential monitoring methods in order to identify the most cost effective, and sustainable, monitoring method for saiga populations in Uzbekistan. This study identified many problems that conservation managers can face and suggested ways that these can be overcome.
Human behaviour is the key driver of all major threats to the natural environment. Recognising its importance is fundamental if conservation practitioners are to tackle biodiversity loss and implement successful solutions.
An expedition went to the remote Ustyurt population in western Kazakhstan during May 2004, to investigate the status of the antelope at a particularly vulnerable time in its life cycle, when the majority of the population historically migrates into a restricted range to form aggregations in which the females give birth in a mass calving event.
Anecdotal evidence from other Saiga populations suggests that at low densities this behaviour changes, with females choosing to give birth away from the shelter of an aggregation.
A female's decision to join an aggregation or to calve solitarily depends on her parturition date relative to other individuals and on the number of other females in the birth area. The results are robust to changes in other parameter values. The Evolutionarily Stable Strategy is to join an aggregation and stay for the full period of neonatal vulnerability if calving early in the birth period, to join the aggregation but to leave it early if calving later in the birth period, and to calve solitarily if calving at the end of the birth period. The possible effects of human disturbance on female behaviour are investigated, and testable hypotheses are presented about the behaviour of females in…
Strategy performance is assessed with respect to a conservation criterion, the revenues achieved and their variability. Strategies that harvest heavily, even when the population is apparently very large, perform badly in the robustness trials. Setting a threshold below which harvesting does not take place, and above which all individuals are harvested, does not provide effective protection against over-harvesting. Strategies that rely on population growth rates rather than estimates of population size are more robust to biased estimates. The strategies that are most robust to uncertainty are simple, involving harvesting a relatively small proportion of the population each year.