In my experience with mammals, I do not think so, because only one individual can make many footprints in a single place and you do not know how much animals are.

Hello Fahrun; Many years ago, the use of "trackboards" was commonplace. Those were pieces of cardboard with a strip of wet printer's ink across the middle. An animal would step in the ink and then leave a print on the nearby cardboard. If you can ID footprints, then you could treat such data as if it were a mark-recapture study that does calculate the population size.

You have a number of identifiable (marked) footprints. Set out your trackboards for a specified period. Then, count the number of "marked" individuals among the total of footprints. That gives you the proportion of the population made up of "marked" individuals.

In the 1960s that method would have seemed reasonable, but very noisy, to a field biologist.

Best regards, Jim Des Lauriers

James Des Lauriers Thanks for the feedback. The footprints actually not an actual foot-print, but more like the track left from the animal that crossed through the transect

You shoul have a look here: https://enetwild.com/resources/reports/

There are different guide for mammal population estimation.

Searching the entwild Website, you can find some more. Snow tracking is one metjod conducted regularily in eastern Europe, can also be zransvribed to other situations.

Yes, you can estimate the density, 1. Divide the area into smaller sampling blocks, (your sample block should be smaller than the home range size of individuals to get multiple impressions of the same individual) 2. establish a track board/footprint impression pad using soft soil (make sure to use a similar pad to avoid variation due to soil nature. 3. Collect the footprint images with scale to get the measurements of prints. 4. Use software to take measurements for footprints. 5. Maybe you can combine with a few camera traps to get to know the individuals you are taking measurements Make sure you collect multiple impressions of the same individual and different individuals. for more details refer to DOI:

• 10.1017/S0952836905007119

Thank you for your response Oliver Keuling , but is it possible to do it in tropical country?

Sure, as long as you have comparable situations, where you can find the tracks. It is more the problem that we do not find the tracks in our regions. Only in sand or snow. And recently we hardly have snow anymore...

We also do phototrapping methods in the tropics and all over the world. E.g. Bawean deer