Counting Critters – An Introduction to Estimating Animal Abundance and Distance Sampling: Florida 2005

We conducted a five-day workshop hosted by Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Orlando, Florida. In the first half of the workshop participants were introduced to the most important methods for estimating animal abundance: plot sampling, distance sampling, mark recapture and removal methods. The focus was on gaining a good understanding of the concepts and assumptions behind the methods, and which to use when. In the second half we concentrated on distance sampling, looking at practical issues such as use of the Distance software for data analysis, survey design and field methods.