Monitoring of Togeanensis Babirusa (Babyrousa togeanensis) Population in Togean Islands National Park

Abstract

Babyrousa togeanensis is an endemic wildlife of Sulawesi Island, Indonesia. Government development programs and the increased activities of local communities in the Togean Islands National Park area are causing this animal habitat to be narrowed. Monitoring the Babyrousa togeanensis population is crucial to updating their numbers in protected areas to avoid extinction. This study used direct and indirect observation methods to investigate the Babirusa population at Urulepe Point, Togean Island. Our study showed that the total population of Babirusa individuals in the study coverage area was 58 individuals per km2, higher than the number reported in the previous year. The increase in the number of Babirusa populations can be assumed to have occurred due to increased awareness of local people about the importance of protected wildlife, as well as a piece of evidence that conservation by the government through the TNKT has been successfully implemented. Environmental conditions in TNKT are good enough to support the habitat and needs of life and breeding of Togean Babirusa. The most effective method of monitoring Babirusa was camera traps because the wildlife avoids humans, making the direct transect strip method less effective for encountering Babirusa.

Developing a monitoring protocol for a threatened species in a developing country: lessons learned from monitoring the Togean Islands babirusa

“…True monitoring programs are different from surveillance activities in that the latter lacks the robust approach required to effectively assess the attainment of a given objective (Elzinga et al 1998). However, surveillance activities are often mislabeled as monitoring (e.g., Yusuf et al 2024), which may explain why many socalled monitoring programs may be inadequate for achieving conservation goals (Legg and Nagy 2006). Accurately designed monitoring protocols can detect trends (i.e., population change) as a means to verify whether conservation programs are on track with the management goals, such as maintaining or increasing population size, or if a decline is inevitable, what the acceptable rate is (Kleiman et al 2016).…”