Occupancy estimation of wild species in a palm oil plantation using unstructured data

In 2020-2024, plantation workers at a large oil palm plantation in West Kalimantan recorded sightings of wild species of several species groups. They did not use a standardized field method and produced no comprehensive reports, but recorded only one or a few species per visit. Such unstructured data are generally viewed as challenging for statistical analysis. Here, we used occupancy models to estimate what proportion of spatial units (both non-natural and forest) a given species occupied annually in the plantation. Models with different covariates were tested for species for which most data were available: 13 birds, 7 mammals, among which the iconic Orangutan Pongo pygmaeus, and 3 reptiles. For each species, the model which best fitted the data was selected. Two shortcomings in our data complicated the analyses. First, occupancy models require detection and non-detection records, but because no fixed species lists were used, there is no unique way to generate non-detections. We generated non-detection records in several ways and ran the models again to evaluate the consequences for occupancy estimates. Second, imbalances in sampling may occur because of a lack of sampling design to select study sites. Most concerning are sites were surveyed only once in 2020-2024. We ran the models without those sites to examine whether results were different. Although the shortcomings mentioned turned out not to distort our results, the occupancy estimates were imprecise for many study species because of low detection rates, and extra efforts are needed to improve that.