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Bradley,
M., Gunn, A., and Dragon, J. 2001. Numbers and Abundance of Muskoxen
East of Artillery Lake, NWT. July 1998. 23 pp.
ABSTRACT
In 1997, hunters in Lutsel K'e
reported increasing numbers of muskoxen and requested a larger quota. In
response to their request, we flew an aerial
survey to determine how much muskox numbers had increased in the area
previously surveyed in 1989 and how far muskoxen have spread outside
management unit boundaries. We flew the
survey between July 16 and 28, 1998, and counted 537 muskoxen on transect
to estimate 1606 ± 278 (Standard Error) muskoxen although the precision
was not high (coefficient of variation
0.17). Muskox numbers doubled between 1989 and 1998 in management unit U/MX/02
and muskoxen had spread into the taiga to the west and southwest compared
to 1989. The survey's low precision leads us to recommend
a quota increase from 14 to 34 based on a rate of 3% of the lower end of
the 90% confidence interval for the estimate (1,606).
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