Assessment of the replenishing potentials of moose populations (Alces alces, Artiodactyla, Mammalia)

The present paper is devoted to the improvement of a method for assessing the replenishing potentials of wildlife populations using dynamic series of their abundance. The essence of the method consists in the fact that if a dynamic abundance series contains a well-defined, sufficiently extended section of the population transition from a smaller to a larger population size, it can be approximated by a logistic curve and the values of the lower and upper stationary states of the population can be determined. For this purpose, it is necessary to choose the longest time period suitable for the corresponding approximation. After that, it is necessary to determine the time period within the dynamic abundance series, in which the population grew most rapidly, and to estimate the value of the actual maximum annual growth of the population with the help of straight-line approximation. The replenishing potential of the population can then be calculated as the ratio of four times the actual maximum annual population growth rate to the difference be-tween the upper and lower stationary states of the population. In the case when animal migrations in the studied population are insignificant or their magnitudes are small compared to internal reproduction, we can speak about the identity of the replenishable potential to the biotic one. We have found that the hereditary reproductive potential of moose in all the populations studied by us is approximately the same regardless of their habitats and is close to r m = 0.5. Analysis of the actually observed maximum growth rate of the considered moose populations has shown that the intensity of their extraction at present can be increased at least two or three times without any negative consequences.