Estimation of Species Richness of Large Vertebrates Using Camera Traps: An Example from an Indonesian Rainforest

The number of biological species that occurs at a particular geographic unit, whether that be global, a biogeographic region, country, or national park, is of great relevance to the management and conservation of biodiversity. Major policy initiatives at the international, national, and regional levels have committed entire government programs to attaining measurable targets of this variable in the conservation of biodiversity (Danielsen et al. 2005). The Convention on Biodiversity lists a reduction in the rate of loss of biodiversity as a goal for 2010 and many of the indicators proposed to measure achievement of that goal are indices that hopefully track changes in species richness (United Nations Environment Programme 2002). It is unlikely that governments will be able to judge their progress without monitoring systems and indicators in place to assess the effectiveness of their interventions (Balmford et al. 2005). Species diversity usually refers to the number of species in a location or “species richness” (Schluter and Ricklefs 1993; Lande 1996). Species richness is often used as a state variable in evaluating the impact of management interventions and anthropogenic disturbance on biodiversity. One of the greatest hindrances to understanding and conserving biodiversity, however, is our inability to determine how many species we have and how fast that number is changing (Balmford et al. 2005; May 1988).

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