A review of wildlife camera trapping trends across Africa

Abstract

Camera traps (CTs) are used for wildlife monitoring globally. How CTs are used in wildlife studies across Africa, however, remains unknown. We provide the first literature review of CT studies conducted across Africa, to describe where, to what end, and by whom CTs are used, and to identify apparent gaps in the use of CTs. We found 172 CT studies published across 60 scientific journals, conducted in 30 of 55 African countries from 2005 to 2017. Most studies were conducted over a single year/season (74%) and primarily addressed habitat use/species distribution (43%), species presence/richness (38.4%), behaviour (35.5%) or demographics (29.7%). Most studies took place in forest (52%), woodland (33%) and grassland (33%) habitat types, and focused on a single species (45.3%). Carnivores were the most commonly studied species group (86%), followed by large herbivores (58%) and primates (38%). Our results suggest that camera trapping is rapidly increasing in use across Africa and potentially driven by country‐based economic factors; however, there is room for improvement. CTs could be expanded in use for studies on underrepresented taxa (i.e. small mammals, reptiles and birds), investigations of human–wildlife conflict and understudied ecoregions (i.e. Sahara Desert).

Assessment of in situ nest decay rate for chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes ellioti Matschie, 1914) in Mbam-Djerem National Park, Cameroon: implications for long-term monitoring

“…Our study aimed at assessing the nest decay rate for MDNP, which could be used to assess chimpanzee density in the area instead of using a non-local nest decay rate. Furthermore, testing other survey techniques such as mark nest count (Plumptre and Cox 2006;Ndimbe et al 2013) and camera trap sampling (Howe et al 2017;Agha et al 2018), which do not depend on nest decay rates, are also important for achieving a reliable density estimate (Mathewson et al 2008).…”

Comparable space use by lions between hunting concessions and national parks in West Africa

“…Here we determine how human utilization of protected areas and ecological attributes interact to influence the space use of lions by using data from an extensive camera survey, the first conducted within NPs and HCs in the WAP complex (Agha et al, 2018). We Table S1).…”

“…Here we determine how human utilization of protected areas and ecological attributes interact to influence the space use of lions by using data from an extensive camera survey, the first conducted within NPs and HCs in the WAP complex (Agha et al, 2018). We integrate occupancy and structural equation modelling (SEM) to disentangle the effects of management type (NPs vs. HCs), indicators of habitat quality, ecological factors and human pressures on space use of lions.…”

First camera survey in Burkina Faso and Niger reveals human pressures on mammal communities within the largest protected area complex in West Africa

“…Camera surveys are an effective approach to obtain social and ecological data that aids decision‐making, given indiscriminate detections of human activities and animals alike (Buxton, Lendrum, Crooks, & Wittemyer, ; Hossain et al., ). Although West Africa is undergoing severe environmental changes making protected areas increasingly more vulnerable, few camera surveys have been conducted to monitor biodiversity or threats to biodiversity (Agha et al., ). Here, we conduct the first camera survey for Burkina Faso and Niger in W‐Arly‐Pendjari (WAP) parks, the largest transboundary protected area complex in West Africa.…”