Monitoring is the Key

settings – resolve themselves to trapping animals once they become a problem in their area. The K-State Research and Extension publication, How to Trap a Coyote (originally published in 1975), is still one of the organization’s most popular downloads each year, with a high of 10,217 views in 2014.

Ricketts said K-State Research and Extension also has published a series of videos on setting traps and picking a location. The five video series is available online.

“Trapping is more likely to take care of those problem animals,” Ricketts said. “Traps are working 24 hours a day. They are a bit more effective at dealing with problem animals than hunting.”

Snares and foothold traps are the most common ways to catch a coyote that is preying on farm livestock, according to Ricketts. While snares are effective, they are also more dangerous to sheep, goats and guardian dogs.

Foothold traps, he said, rarely do much damage or cause injuries, but their placement is critical to success. Ricketts said foothold traps should be placed in areas where there are coyote tracks or scat; near pond dams or a trail; or in a specific area where the problem is occurring. ▫

by Callie Gnatkowski Gibson

For landowners and land managers in New Mexico, collecting and analyzing monitoring data is the key to effective management of big game populations – whether wildlife is a large or small part of the operation. Countless variables can impact wildlife populations, including precipitation, predators, birth rates and more, and understanding that information having that information knowing what is going on with your herd

In his recent circular “Guidelines for Monitoring Big Game Populations in New Mexico II: Trend Indices” Dr. Louis C. Bender with New Mexico State University’s Department of Extension Animal Sciences and Natural Resources explains that how the data is collected and analyzed makes a big difference in its usefulness. “Many wildlife enterprises prefer to monitor the trend in their big game populations rather than estimating the actual abundance of their populations,” he explained. “Trend is the directional movement in population abundance, and a valid trend index can indicate whether a population has increased, decreased, or remained about the same from some previous time.”

He also cautions against drawing conclusions from data that has not been analyzed correctly. And, Dr. Bender continues, trend indices often don’t accurately reflect the trends in big game populations. “Additionally, trend indices—even if valid— provide less useful information for management than composition surveys.”

To ensure the accuracy of trend indices, its important to look at the assumptions and sampling effort involved. Although the assumption is often that the relationship between changes in the trend index is proportional to changes in population size, it’s not always that simple and that relationship can be affected by many factors. It’s also important, Bender notes, to survey a large, geographically distributed population.

For managers who want to get reliable trend data to help them make management decisions, its important to make sure your survey is designed for your specific situation. In his circular, Bender suggests several techniques and trend indices that can be put to use effectively, and explains how to make them work for individual situations. Those include Catch-Per-Unit-Effort (CPUE) – often put in place with camera trapping surveys; individual identification – identifying individual animals in the photos taken to determine population numbers and animal movement; minimum counts – determining the minimum population on a ranch; spotlight surveys and ground counts – methods to collect minimum herd size and herd composition data; and pellet-group counts - counting the number of pellet-groups of the target species found in plots or belt transects.

For more information on Dr. Bender’s research, or to read his full research circular, please visit: https://aces.nmsu.edu/pubs/_ circulars/cr700. ▫