Hunting indicators for community-led wildlife management in tropical Africa

Engaging local communities is pivotal for wildlife conservation beyond protected areas, aligning with the 30 × 30 target of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. We assessed the effectiveness of 33 offtake indicators, derived from hunter declarations, in monitoring the status and extent of degradation of hunted wildlife sourced from camera trap surveys and faunal composition analysis. The rodents:ungulates ratio in offtake and the mean body mass of total offtake emerged as practical and robust indicators of faunal degradation within hunting systems, with significant potential for broader application in similar tropical forest environments. Our findings provide a blueprint for managing and conserving natural resources in tropical regions through community-based initiatives. Involving local stakeholders ensures sustainable wildlife use and fosters ownership and responsibility. This study advances conservation efforts, bridging scientific rigor with community engagement for effective biodiversity preservation

Contrasting effects of defaunation on aboveground carbon storage across the global tropics

Defaunation is causing declines of large-seeded animal-dispersed trees in tropical forests worldwide, but whether and how these declines will affect carbon storage across this biome is unclear. Here we show, using a pan-tropical dataset, that simulated declines of large-seeded animal-dispersed trees have contrasting effects on aboveground carbon stocks across Earth’s tropical forests. In our simulations, African, Neotropical and South Asian forests which have high proportions of animal-dispersed species consistently show carbon losses (2-12%), but Southeast Asian and Australian forests where there are more abiotically-dispersed species show little to no carbon losses or marginal gains (±1%). These patterns result primarily from changes in wood volume, and are underlain by consistent relationships in our empirical data (~2100 species), wherein, large-seeded animal-dispersed species are larger as adults than small-seeded animal-dispersed species, but are smaller than abiotically-dispersed species. Thus, floristic differences and distinct dispersal mode-seed size-adult size combinations can drive contrasting regional responses to defaunation

Evolution of educational inequalities in site-specific cancer mortality among Belgian men between the 1990s and 2000s using a “fundamental cause” perspective

Background: According to the "fundamental cause" theory, emerging knowledge on health-enhancing behaviours and technologies results in health disparities. This study aims to assess (trends in) educational inequalities in site-specific cancer mortality in Belgian men in the 1990s and the 2000s using this framework. Methods: Data were derived from record linkage between the Belgian censuses of 1991 and 2001 and register data on mortality. The study population comprised all Belgian men aged 50-79 years during follow-up. Both absolute and relative inequality measures have been calculated. Results: Despite an overall downward trend in cancer mortality, educational differences are observed for the majority of cancer sites in the 2000s. Generally, inequalities are largest for mortality from preventable cancers. Trends over time in inequalities are rather stable compared with the 1990s. Conclusions: Educational differences in site-specific cancer mortality persist in the 2000s in Belgium, mainly for cancers related to behavioural change and medical interventions. Policy efforts focussing on behavioural change and healthcare utilization remain crucial in order to tackle these increasing inequalities.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Quantifying the impacts of defaunation on natural forest regeneration in a global meta-analysis

Intact forests provide diverse and irreplaceable ecosystem services that are critical to human well-being, such as carbon storage to mitigate climate change. However, the ecosystem functions that underpin these services are highly dependent on the woody vegetation-animal interactions occurring within forests. While vertebrate defaunation is of growing policy concern, the effects of vertebrate loss on natural forest regeneration have yet to be quantified globally. Here we conduct a meta-analysis to assess the direction and magnitude of defaunation impacts on forests. We demonstrate that real-world defaunation caused by hunting and habitat fragmentation leads to reduced forest regeneration, although manipulation experiments provide contrasting findings. The extirpation of primates and birds cause the greatest declines in forest regeneration, emphasising their key role in maintaining carbon stores, and the need for national and international climate change and conservation strategies to protect forests from defaunation fronts as well as deforestation fronts

Standardized Assessment of Biodiversity Trends in Tropical Forest Protected Areas: The End Is Not in Sight

Extinction rates in the Anthropocene are three orders of magnitude higher than background and disproportionately occur in the tropics, home of half the world’s species. Despite global efforts to combat tropical species extinctions, lack of high-quality, objective information on tropical biodiversity has hampered quantitative evaluation of conservation strategies. In particular, the scarcity of population-level monitoring in tropical forests has stymied assessment of biodiversity outcomes, such as the status and trends of animal populations in protected areas. Here, we evaluate occupancy trends for 511 populations of terrestrial mammals and birds, representing 244 species from 15 tropical forest protected areas on three continents. For the first time to our knowledge, we use annual surveys from tropical forests worldwide that employ a standardized camera trapping protocol, and we compute data analytics that correct for imperfect detection. We found that occupancy declined in 22%, increased in 17%, and exhibited no change in 22% of populations during the last 3–8 years, while 39% of populations were detected too infrequently to assess occupancy changes. Despite extensive variability in occupancy trends, these 15 tropical protected areas have not exhibited systematic declines in biodiversity (i.e., occupancy, richness, or evenness) at the community level. Our results differ from reports of widespread biodiversity declines based on aggregated secondary data and expert opinion and suggest less extreme deterioration in tropical forest protected areas. We simultaneously fill an important conservation data gap and demonstrate the value of large-scale monitoring infrastructure and powerful analytics, which can be scaled to incorporate additional sites, ecosystems, and monitoring methods. In an era of catastrophic biodiversity loss, robust indicators produced from standardized monitoring infrastructure are critical to accurately assess population outcomes and identify conservation strategies that can avert biodiversity collapse. © 2016 Beaudrot et al

Population status of Pan troglodytes verus in Lagoas de Cufada Natural Park, Guinea-Bissau

The western chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes verus, has been classified as Endangered on the IUCN Red List since 1988. Intensive agriculture, commercial plantations, logging, and mining have eliminated or degraded the habitats suitable for P. t. verus over a large part of its range. In this study we assessed the effect of land-use change on the population size and density of chimpanzees at Lagoas de Cufada Natural Park (LCNP), Guinea-Bissau. We further explored chimpanzee distribution in relation to landscape-level proxies of human disturbance. Nest count and distance-sampling methods were employed along 11 systematically placed linear transects in 2010 and 2011. Estimated nest decay rate was 293.9 days (%CV = 58.8). Based on this estimate of decay time and using the Standing-Crop Nest Count Method, we obtained a habitat-weighted average chimpanzee density estimate for 2011 of 0.22 nest building chimpanzees/km2 (95% CI 0.08–0.62), corresponding to 137 (95% CI 51.0–390.0) chimpanzees for LCNP. Human disturbance had a negative influence on chimpanzee distribution as nests were built farther away from human settlements, roads, and rivers than if they were randomly distributed, coinciding with the distribution of the remaining patches of dense canopy forest. We conclude that the continuous disappearance of suitable habitat (e.g. the replacement of LCNP's dense forests by monocultures of cashew plantations) may be compromising the future of one of the most threatened Guinean coastal chimpanzee populations. We discuss strategies to ensure long-term conservation in this important refuge for this chimpanzee subspecies at its westernmost margin of geographic distribution.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Belgian health-related data in three international databases.

&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;AIMS OF THE STUDY: &lt;/b&gt;This study wants to examine the availability of Belgian healthcare data in the three main international health databases: the World Health Organization European Health for All Database (WHO-HFA), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Health Data 2009 and EUROSTAT.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;METHODS: &lt;/b&gt;For the indicators present in the three databases, the availability of Belgian data and the source of these data were checked.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;MAIN FINDINGS: &lt;/b&gt;The most important problem concerning the availability of Belgian health-related data in the three major international databases is the lack of recent data. Recent data are available for 27% of the indicators of the WHO-HFA database, 73% of the OECD Health Data, and for half of the Eurostat indicators. Especially recent data about health status (including mortality-based indicators) are lacking.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;DISCUSSION: &lt;/b&gt;Only the availability of the health-related data is studied in this article. The quality of the Belgian data is however also important to examine.The main problem concerning the availability of health data is the timeliness. One of the causes of this lack of (especially mortality) data is the reform of the Belgian State. Nowadays mortality data are provided by the communities. This results in a delay in the delivery of national mortality data. However several efforts are made to catch up.&lt;/p&gt;</p