Mammal Depletion Processes as Evidenced From Spatially Explicit and Temporal Local Ecological Knowledge

Abstract

In the face of increased defaunation in tropical regions, embracing the complexity of wildlife population trends is important to guide the development of effective conservation and restoration strategies. Here, based on a case study in Democratic Republic of the Congo, we use an ethnozoological approach, with a protocol that captures spatially explicit and temporal ecological knowledge on defaunation. Our case study evidences the overall depletion profile for the majority of mammal species in the whole landscape and particularly for red colobus, orycterope, and chimpanzee. The elephant has already disappeared locally, and okapi and forest buffalo only persist in the northern part of the landscape. On the other hand, postdepletion sustainability seems to characterize Yangambi Reserve, with more stable populations of fast-reproducing/ small-sized species. Local extinctions or sharp declines in mammal populations in our landscape are either the direct consequence of conflict or the result of cascading effects that have their origins in the rebellions between 1996 and 2002. From a conservation perspective, the challenge is to understand how the depletion process can be reversed in a postconflict context and to identify the levers that can inverse the cascading effect to allow species recovery. We encourage the use of our methodology in regions that are regularly used by a significant number of observers. The proposed methodology provides cost-effective, reliable, and spatially explicit data on population trends, covering for a wide range of species and allows to understand the historical pattern of defaunation as well the wider context in which changes occurred.

Hunting in French Guiana Across Time, Space and Livelihoods

“…As often underlined, the use of space is the major key (Levi et al, 2011b;McNamara et al, 2015;Takashina and Mougi, 2015;Constantino et al, 2018;Shaffer et al, 2018b;Van Vliet et al, 2018). Most models rely on central foraging models, with a homogeneous access to the forest from the settlement.…”

Use of game fauna by Fulni-ô people in Northeastern Brazil: implications for conservation

“…Although the low number of volunteers monitored hunters in the second stage of hunting monitoring (n = 20), we believe that these data represent the current scenario of hunting among the most active hunters that allowed the collection of such information. The results on the number of animals and taxa hunted diverge from other studies regarding the annual rate of extraction of these resources in places with high faunistic diversity, such as the Amazon region [2,10,36], as well as in other tropical regions such as many African countries [37][38][39][40]. These differences in relation to the Amazon, for example, may be directly related to the faunistic composition and its size and the nutritional demands of the region [4,10].…”

Declining Ungulate Populations in an African Rainforest: Evidence From Local Knowledge, Ecological Surveys, and Bushmeat Records

“…The knowledge accumulated over generations by local people in the use of natural resources can provide valuable insights for sustainable management (Pan et al, 2015;Nash et al, 2016;Duda et al, 2017;Brittain et al, 2018;van Vliet et al, 2018). We analyzed the perceived state and trends in species composition of the animals killed using snare traps (here considered as a proxy for understanding wildlife changes through space and time) in two CHZ with contrasting human population densities in southeast Cameroon.…”

“…"Red duikers" are constituted of Cephalophus callipygus, C. dorsalis, C. leucogaster and C. nigrifrons. *Numbers in brackets represent population density estimates (ind.km −2 ), calculated using Distance 6.2 software (Thomas et al, 2010). Kamgaing et al (2018) provided published data on population density estimates for duikers and unpublished data for the tree pangolin and brush-tailed porcupine.…”