Abstract: The site occupancy model, developed by Mackenzie in 2002, has been used to estimate proportion of an area occupied by target species for further efforts to estimate abundance of the species, predict range of its distribution and learn its community structure. A review is oriented to introduce basic principles of the occupancy model, including data type, basic parameters, model selection and application scope, and also summarize progresses of the researches of the model and its application. However, so far, the studies on the model and its application are mainly credited to foreign scholars, though in recent years, some researchers in China have also set out to try the model in the field of surveys and monitoring. On such a basis, some problems that may pop up in the actual application of the model have been analyzed, such as introduction of covariates, heterogeneity of detectivity, imperfectness of observations, lack of observations, etc. and the causes of these problems have been explained. In the end, proposals for further perfecting the model and applying it to biodiversity surveying and monitoring programs in China have been brought forth, and hence to provide some effective technical support for biodiversity protection.