Keeping track of the number of wild animals killed illegally has never been easy. Now, a recent paper in the journal Biological Conservation has suggested simple recipe-book mathematics as a tool to get more accurate numbers.

 

Karpagam Chelliah, Harshavardhan Bukka and Raman Sukumar from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India, used mathematics to understand population trends in the elephant. They developed a model that uses three ratios to describe a population: the sex ratio, the ratio of old males to young males, and the proportion of adult males. Together the researchers were able to use these ratios to predict how many elephants were poached over a certain period of time.

 

When tested with real data from two populations, one of Asian and one of African elephants, the model predicted with reasonable accuracy the number of elephants poached in both.

 

The model does make certain simplifying assumptions - it assumes constant birth rate and death rate, and that no new animals are entering or leaving a population, which is unrealistic considering natural populations. But the researchers still feel confident that their model provides accurate results.

 

Overall, the model can be modified in many ways, and could be used for monitoring numbers of other animals whose populations need to be modeled, especially those that are poached illegally for different reasons.