Also, the vastness of the West tends to concentrate volunteer efforts in or around larger cities. It is more difficult to organize surveys in undeveloped areas, which are often great distances from the urban centers. Whatever the reasons, agency and related efforts have highly motivated biologists who do most of the survey efforts in the West. The scope of this paper is declining amphibians in western North America. We only mention monitoring because this component is just being developed.
Most current work is in fact inventory surveys.
To us, monitoring is defined as reliably sampling amphibian populations over long periods, and this requires accurate population estimates that are not obtainable at this time. We focus on the Pacific Northwest or specific cases in the West, but we attempt to discuss issues of broad interest and to present a model of a survey system that works regionally. Too often, the declining amphibian issue is considered a problem that happened a year or so ago. However, the situation has been under study for some time. The overall effect is highly beneficial and the issue of declining amphibians is now a major conservation effort.