Recent Estimates of Ring-Tailed Lemur (Lemur catta) Population Declines are Methodologically Flawed and Misleading

Conserving and managing threatened species requires accurate population estimates.Recently, LaFleur et al. (2017) and Gould and Sauther (2016) attempted to estimate thesize of the extant population of ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta) based on rapid fieldassessments and published counts from 32 and 34 sites, respectively, and estimated thereto be fewer than 2500 ring-tailed lemurs remaining in the wild (Gould and Sauther 2016:2000–2400 individuals; LaFleur et al. 2017: 2200 individuals). However, both studieshave likely severely underestimated the size of the extant ring-tailed lemur populationbecause of a range of methodological problems. Specifically, 1) the population status ofseveral sites was misinterpreted from the literature, 2) population estimates for severalimportant sites are incomplete or lacking, and 3) total population estimates are based onan incomplete sample of known populations.