Characteristics of Positive Deviants in Western Chimpanzee Populations

Abstract

Heinicke et al. Positive Deviants in Chimpanzee Populations social-ecological configurations: first, rainforest habitats with a low degree of human impact, second, steep areas, and third, areas with high prevalence of hunting taboos and low degree of human impact. The largest chimpanzee populations are nowadays found under the third social-ecological configuration, even though most of these areas are not officially protected. Most commonly chimpanzee conservation has been based on exclusion of threats by creation of protected areas and law enforcement. Our findings suggest, however, that this approach should be complemented by an additional focus on threat reduction, i.e., interventions that directly target individual human behavior that is most threatening to chimpanzees, which is hunting. Although changing human behavior is difficult, stakeholder co-designed behavioral change approaches developed in the social sciences have been used successfully to promote pro-environmental behavior. With only a fraction of chimpanzees and primates living inside protected areas, such new approaches might be a way forward to improve primate conservation.

Advancing conservation planning for western chimpanzees using IUCN SSC A.P.E.S.—the case of a taxon-specific database

“…We then extracted 20 predictor variables for each transect using publicly available satellite and aggregated householdsurvey data which approximate known drivers of chimpanzee density including both environmental variables and anthropogenic pressure (details in table S2 and table S3). We originally started with a model comprising the same predictors used in an earlier study to identify drivers of chimpanzee densities (Heinicke et al 2019), but the initial evaluation of the derived density distribution revealed an underestimation of chimpanzee densities for protected areas. We therefore added 'protected area' as a binary predictor, meaning whether the midpoint of a transect was within the boundaries of a protected area designated as 'national park' or IUCN category I or II based on data from the World Database of Protected Areas (UNEP-WCMC and IUCN 2017).…”

“…Chimpanzees in the Fouta Djallon and adjacent areas appear to be a large population characterized by savanna-mosaic habitat. Despite challenging ecological conditions (Wessling et al 2018), chimpanzees persist here at high densities due to relatively low levels of anthropogenic threats and a high prevalence of hunting taboos (Boesch et al 2017, Heinicke et al 2019. Chimpanzees in the second largest population live in a habitat mostly characterized by rainforest.…”

Towards systematic and evidence‐based conservation planning for western chimpanzees

“…Chimpanzees live in a diversity of habitat types including mosaics of forests and agricultural areas (Hockings et al, ). They are able to persist in areas where hunting pressure is low, usually because local residents have long‐held traditions of not hunting chimpanzees (Boesch et al, ; Heinicke et al, ; Kormos et al, ). Although the effectiveness of conservation activities outside protected areas is under‐studied (Junker et al, ), it is recognized that measures such as reducing hunting pressure are essential (Kühl et al, ).…”

“…The area selection was based on estimated chimpanzee density distribution that was recently modeled across its entire range using 20 social and ecological factors, including habitat, climate, threats to chimpanzees such as forest loss and human activities, and factors having a positive effect on chimpanzee densities such as protected areas, prevalence of hunting taboos, and steepness of terrain (Heinicke et al, ). This data layer has a spatial resolution of half a minute (of a longitude/latitude degree, approximately 0.9 × 0.9 km) and is available via the IUCN SSC A.P.E.S.…”

“…The main threats to western chimpanzees are loss and fragmentation of habitat, poaching and disease (Humle et al, ). However, chimpanzees are able to persist in areas protected from habitat loss and in which they are not hunted, for example, because of effective law enforcement, the presence of protected area authorities, NGOs or researchers, hunting taboos, or limited access in steep terrain (Boesch, Mundry, Kühl, & Berger, ; Campbell, Kuehl, Diarrassouba, N'Goran, & Boesch, ; Heinicke et al, ; Tranquilli et al, ).…”