Evidence-based management of large carnivores is a crucial step towards their effective conservation. However, monitoring of these populations is demanding and generally requires substantial fieldwork effort. Lately, citizen science has become an increasingly important part of wildlife monitoring, but can that endanger studied species? In this paper, we describe our experiences with recruiting and involving volunteers in annual howling surveys of grey wolf (Canis lupus) population in Slovenia and present the framework about the use of citizens for collecting data. Huge effort of participants in a 7-year-long monitoring at a national scale has yielded a total of 116 wolf vocal responses, including 53 confirmed litters. Annually, between 5 and 12 reproductive packs were detected and an increasing trend in wolf population throughout the study period was observed. Volunteer-based howling surveys proved to be a cost-effective method for detection of reproductive packs on a large spatial scale, offering an insight into wolf population trends across a longer time period and we provide some recommendations for organisation and coordination of surveys. We also discuss ethical issues raised from our experience in using citizen science for this purpose.

中文翻译：

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公民科学对国家狼群监测的贡献：我们学到了什么？

大型食肉动物的循证管理是有效养护它们的关键步骤。然而，对这些人群的监测要求很高，并且通常需要大量的实地调查工作。最近，公民科学已成为野生动植物监测中越来越重要的一部分，但是这是否会危害已研究物种？在本文中，我们描述了我们在招募志愿者和使他们参与灰狼（Canis lupus）年度annual叫调查中的经验。）人口，并介绍了有关使用公民收集数据的框架。参与者在全国范围内进行了为期7年的监测，付出了巨大的努力，最终产生了116头狼的声音反应，其中包括53头已确认的猫砂。每年，在整个研究期间，检测到5至12个生殖器官，并观察到狼群的增长趋势。事实证明，基于志愿者的how叫调查是一种经济有效的方法，可以在较大的空间范围内检测繁殖包装，从而洞察狼在较长时间内的趋势，并为调查的组织和协调提供一些建议。我们还将讨论从将公民科学用于此目的的经验中提出的道德问题。