Analysis of wildlife population dynamics using a connected scatter plot: Latvian wild animals as an example

摘要

An easy way to calculate index that summarizes population dynamics in a comparative manner may make it easy for wildlife departments to detect species that should be given the highest priority in management. The purpose of this study was to propose one possible index and an associated scatter plot to make the conditions of wild animal populations easy to compare. We developed a unit-free index to make it possible to compare populations at different stages of population expansion and/or populations of similar but different species. We applied our index and scatter plot empirically for Latvian game animals using data collected between 1922 and 2009 to verify the usefulness of our method. Our index appropriately reflects changes before and after the second independence and the accession to the EU. As expected, our results suggest that the conditions of wild animals in Latvia have been improving, particularly after accession to the EU.