Supporting conservation with biodiversity research in sub-Saharan Africa’s human-modified landscapes

Abstract

Protected areas cover 12% of terrestrial sub-Saharan Africa. However, given the inherent inadequacies of these protected areas to cater for all species in conjunction with the effects of climate change and human pressures on protected areas, the future of biodiversity depends heavily on the 88% of land that is unprotected. The study of biodiversity patterns and the processes that maintain them in human-modified landscapes can provide a valuable evidence base to support science-based policy-making that seeks to make land outside of protected areas as amenable as possible for biodiversity persistence. We discuss the literature on biodiversity in 2 sub-Saharan Africa"s human-modified landscapes as it relates to four broad ecosystem categorizations (i.e. rangelands, tropical forest, the Cape Floristic Region, and the urban and rural built environment) within which we expect similar patterns of biodiversity persistence in relation to specific human land uses and land management actions. Available research demonstrates the potential contribution of biodiversity conservation in human-modified landscapes within all four ecosystem types and goes some way towards providing general conclusions that could support policy-making. Nonetheless, conservation success in humanmodified landscapes is hampered by constraints requiring further scientific investment, e.g. deficiencies in the available research, uncertainties regarding implementation strategies, and difficulties of coexisting with biodiversity. However, information currently available can and should support efforts at individual, community, provincial, national, and international levels to support biodiversity conservation in human-modified landscapes.

Trends in bird species richness, abundance and biomass along a tropical urbanization gradient

“…an appreciation of the ecosystem services that such birds provide) could be assessed by carrying out similar surveys across urban-rural gradients in several African cities spanning a range of climatic and socioeconomic conditions. This study has provided the basis for just such a wider consideration of urban biodiversity trends in the developing world, which needs to include human-modified alongside natural habitats (Trimble and van Aarde 2014). Table 3).…”

“…However, studies from the tropics are scarce, and for birds at least, there are few from developing countries (Marzluff et al 2001;Pautasso et al 2011), yet the developing world shows the highest rates of human population growth (United Nations Population Fund 2014), the highest rates of expected future urbanization of the human population (Cohen 2006), and most biodiversity hot-spots are in the developing world (Myers et al 2000). There is therefore the expectation that impacts on biodiversity due to urbanization are likely to be most marked in developing tropical countries (Filloy et al 2015), hence further studies in the developing world are essential in order to understand potential consequences of urbanization (Trimble and van Aarde 2014), and also to begin to formulate strategies that may allow increasing urbanization in a more sustainable way (e.g. Stott et al 2015).…”

Prioritization of useful medicinal tree species for conservation in Wari-Maro Forest Reserve in Benin: A multivariate analysis approach

“…To avoid similar failures, it would be better to manage the conservation of those species in private lands by associating local people. Indeed, plantation on private land has been used and proved successful to conserve some tree species elsewhere (Langpap and Kerkvliet, 2012;Kamal and Grodzinska-Jurczak, 2014;Trimble and van Aarde, 2014). This form of management can allow conservation and sustainable use of these native tree species.…”

Chimpanzees in an anthropogenic landscape: Examining food resources across habitat types at Bossou, Guinea, West Africa

“…The need for examining anthropogenic landscapes for conserving primate populations has become apparent in recent years [Chapman & Peres, ; Schwitzer et al, ] and an increasing number of primate studies and conservation activities are now focusing on these human dominated environments [e.g., Benchimol & Peres, ; Chapman et al, ; Cowlishaw & Dunbar, ; Halloran et al, ; Irwin et al, ]. However, empirical data on biodiversity in agricultural‐forest mosaics in primate range countries, particularly across Africa is lacking [Blanco & Waltert, ; Norris et al, ; Trimble & van Aarde, ]. Quantifying the ecological parameters that define an anthropogenic landscape, particularly from the perspective of the primate population under investigation is challenging as each anthropogenic landscape will have dynamic spatial and temporal patterns influenced by sociocultural and ecosystem processes [Duvall, ].…”