The use of Red Deers vocalization for population census

Red deer populations have increased both in North America and Europe, in the last 50 years probably as a consequence of the general improvement of habitat quality, shorter hunting seasons, food supply and habitat improvement, reintroductions and restocking. This growth intensity and distribution of red deer populations has brought benefits to hunters but also damages to forestry and agriculture. Considering these aspects, deers management should gain a sort of balance between harvesting and conservation. Different strategies should be adopted to adjust population density according to different habitats and ecosystems. The first action to take is the population census. Traditional methods are the visual and roaring census. Counting roaring stags during the rut has been proposed as a mean to assess deer population size and trends but few, if any, attempts have been made to evaluate the reliability of this technique.In this research 7 roaring stags were recorded during mating season from late August to October 2010 in five different areas located in the Alps in north Italy and in the northen Appennines in central Italy. acoustic analysis has been performed. Acoustic signals can encode and transmit a variety of biologically significant information such as individual identity, age, size, physical condition, competitive ability and mating success. Individual morphology of their vocal apparatus directly influences spectral features of acoustic signals which are pre-requisite for individual recognition. Improvement of acoustics roaring census looks a promising reliable tool to supervise the native deer’s populations and it might also be combined to other technologies like GPS, Tags or RIFD for a fully automatic wild animals monitoring.