Comparing survey methods to assess the conservation value of a community-managed protected area in western Tanzania

Abstract

The ability of low-status protected areas under community management to achieve a conservation objective is frequently questioned, particularly in developing countries. The lack of sound, scientific-based biodiversity monitoring frequently undermines attempts to evaluate the extent to which these areas are contributing to biodiversity conservation. Based on data collected between 2008 and 2010 in a Forest Reserve under community management in western Tanzania, our study tested fives methods: camera trapping, walking line transects, vehicle transects, opportunistic encounters and indirect signs, to find the most appropriate for future monitoring. Method comparisons confirmed a higher performance of camera trapping compared to other methods for the ability to detect species. However, our results identified the need of a better survey design to ensure a sound monitoring in the future. Besides method comparisons, our study provides the first fine-scale data on mammal communities in such a low-status protected area. Combined methods allow the identification of 49 species of medium and large mammals, a surprisingly high diversity for such area. These findings outline the potential conservation value of this type of protected area and call for better biodiversity monitoring throughout complexes of protected areas of different statuses and management regimes.

Estimates of Species Richness and Composition Depend on Detection Method in Assemblages of Terrestrial Mammals

“…The joint use of all four methods also yielded the maximum richness in each locality. These results support the hypothesis that single methods seldom provide a complete description of mammal assemblages, which is partly due to method’s species-specificity [ 62 , 63 ] and partly the consequence of a biased detection towards the most conspicuous or abundant species [ 53 , 55 ]. Nevertheless, there are still numerous examples of large-scale mammal surveys that use a single detection method for characterising mammal communities without explicitly testing its efficiency and consistency [ 64 , 65 , 66 ], thus overlooking the risk of underestimating community indices.…”

The shortcomings of short‐term biodiversity studies in assessing mammalian diversity, a case study in the Niari Province, Republic of Congo

“…Our aim was to highlight information that can be derived from ESIAs and consider the potential of such investigations for preliminary mammalian diversity assessment. ESIAs differ from subject‐specific scientific studies (Breuer, Mavinga, & Breuer‐Ndoundou Hockemba, ; Caro, ; Clark, Poulsen, Malonga, & Elkan, ; Hausser, Tagand, Vimercati, Mermod, & Fischer, ; Makundi, Massawe, & Mulungu, ; Nakashima, ; Vanthomme, Kolowski, Korte, & Alonso, ), the benefits of which are undisputed. However, we demonstrate that although there is a potential contribution from commercially funded ESIAs to the ecological knowledge pool, this approach has limitations.…”

“…Recce surveys of mammalian sign do not require direct sighting (Hausser et al, 2016) of target species. As recce surveys do not require prior establishment (Hall et al, 1998;Walters, 2010), they were selected over traditional transects.…”

Comparing interview methods with camera trap data to inform occupancy models of hunted mammals in forest habitats

“…We predict that species that are of particular interest to hunters, such as pangolins, will be well detected within the hunter diaries. We also expect both locally informed methods to be more cost‐effective than camera traps (Garrote & Pérez de Ayala, 2015; Hausser et al, 2017).…”