Sample Conclusion Section
Phil Druker, Dept. of English, UI

This text comes from a report on the bighorn sheep population in Big Creek
in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness. The report is 14 pages
long (before the conclusion).

Note how the author emphasizes the main results and pulls together the
analysis he presented earlier in the report. This conclusion is not a summary:
rather the author emphasizes what the results mean.

CONCLUSION 

Monitoring of the Big Creek population of bighorn sheep during the summer of
2001 revealed high late-summer lamb:ewe ratios across the whole population and
high survival of known ewes and lambs. Both of these suggest that the population is
not suffering from the early-summer, Pasteurella spp. related, lamb mortality that
occurred during the summers of 1989 and 1990. Using chi-square analysis of the
data it was possible to quantify the differences between the two time periods and
show that it is significant. 

Analysis of the possible usage shift away from lambing areas did not reveal any
conclusive trends. Some sites within lambing areas saw an increase in use while
others did not. The discovery of one previously undocumented site and the evidence
that another site likely exists, reveals that there are still critical gaps in the baseline
knowledge of this population that need to be filled before conclusive analysis can be
made. 

The principal conclusion that was revealed through the monitoring in 2001 is that
continued long-term monitoring of this population is needed before its dynamics can
truly be understood.