Most species are imperfectly detected during biological surveys, which creates uncertainty around their abundance or presence at a given location. Decision makers managing threatened or pest species are regularly faced with this uncertainty. Wildlife diseases can drive species to extinction; thus, managing species with disease is an important part of conservation. Devil facial tumor disease (DFTD) is one such disease that led...

The extinction of a species can be inferred from a record of its sightings. Existing methods for doing so assume that all sightings in the record are valid. Often , however , there are sightings of uncertain validity. To date , uncertain sightings have been treated in an ad hoc way, either excluding them from the record or including them as if they were certain. We developed a Bayesian method that formally accounts for such un...

Statements of extinction will always be uncertain because of imperfect detection of species in the wild. Two errors can be made when declaring a species extinct. Extinction can be declared prematurely, with a resulting loss of protection and management intervention. Alternatively, limited conservation resources can be wasted attempting to protect a species that no longer exists. Rather than setting an arbitrary level of certai...