International Dark Sky Week is a global celebration of the night – one that is most often associated with star-gazing. But this year, Dark Sky International and Bats without Borders have come together to highlight the importance of darkness for all creatures of the night

Darkness plays a rarely-acknowledged but crucial role in the health of our planet’s ecosystems, in human health, in our cultural heritage, the advancement of science and space exploration – and yet 80% of the world’s population now lives under light-polluted skies.

Not so in Africa! Africa boasts some of the darkest skies on Earth, with many rural areas enjoying truly dark nights. These unique and pristine skies afford visitors a rare and awe-inspiring celestial viewing experience. But without intervention, African dark nights will also disappear, pushed back by advancing infrastructure development and urbanisation. Regulations to safeguard the quality of dark skies are largely absent and understandably, energy efficiency often takes precedence over preserving darkness. The threat of light pollution is growing for one of the world’s fastest urbanising regions, and with it a number of unique consequences.

Africa is home to a number of exceptional nocturnal species, including bats, foxes, bushbabies, aardvarks and pangolins, to name but a few. It is also home to remarkable plant life, such as the African baobab tree, which can live for centuries and blooms at night, attracting nocturnal pollinators. Flat-topped acacia trees are prevalent in the drier savannas, playing a crucial role in nocturnal food webs by supporting arthropods and bats. Bats in particular are among the most threatened mammals globally and rely heavily on the darkness for cover and to find prey.

Africa is an important biodiversity hotspot for bats, with over 200 known species – a number that is rising all the time, as new species are discovered. Nevertheless, the continent is a bat conservation void where species are threatened by habitat loss, agricultural intensification, disturbance and climate change. In some areas bats also face persecution by people or are hunted for bushmeat. Artificial light at night (ALAN) can negatively impact the foraging and roosting behaviour of bats – yet another risk factor for these already threatened populations.

“These remarkable nocturnal mammals play a vital role in ecosystems by pollinating plants, dispersing seeds and controlling insect populations. But increasing artificial light at night disrupts their natural behaviours, making it harder for them to navigate, feed and survive. By protecting the night, we also protect the biodiversity that depends on it” says Natasha Chortos of Dark Sky International

Safeguarding Africa’s dark skies is also essential for the future of the regions’ wildlife and travel industries. Global interest in Dark Skies tourism is on the rise and Africa is ideally positioned as a destination for travellers eager to explore the cosmos. There are presently two designated International Dark Sky Places (NamibRand Dark Sky Reserve and the !Ae!Hai Kalahari Heritage Park) with more needed for preserving and protecting dark skies across Africa.

So-called nocturism includes a whole host of nighttime experiences; everything from stargazing and star-bathing to aurora-hunting and night-safaris. If you enjoy getting up close and personal with nocturnal wildlife, few such experiences rival the breathtaking spectacle of the world’s largest mammal migration in Zambia’s Kasanka National Park. Every year, between October and December, as many as 10 million straw-coloured fruit-bats (Eidolon helvum) fly for thousands of miles from all over Africa to converge on this evergreen swamp forest –attracting nature-lovers from around the globe.

Bats without Borders is a charity dedicated to conserving bats, biodiversity and healthy ecosystems within southern Africa’s changing landscape. The organisation supports applied research that informs targeted conservation, strengthens local capacity and promotes positive public engagement. This Dark Skies Week, Bats without Borders is raising funds for a first African fruit-bat monitoring programme. The campaign is part of the Green Match Fund, an initiative that will double the value of donations made between April 22^nd and 29^th – the perfect opportunity to double the difference that you can make to community-led bat conservation!

‘Twin climate change and nature emergencies, mean that our wildlife is under unprecedented pressure. But for many bat species in southern Africa, we simply don’t know the status of the species. There is huge value in community science as a way to collect invaluable data that can be used over time, to better understand bat population trends. This evidence-base will help inform the conservation action that is needed to protect bats in southern Africa’ says Dr Rachael Cooper-Bohannon conservation scientist and founder of Bats without Borders.

Double your support for bats of southern Africa this Dark Sky Week

The post Night Matters: How Dark Skies Support Wildlife, Culture, and Conservation appeared first on African Conservation Foundation.

On Earth Day, the charity ‘African Conservation Foundation’ is proud to announce the launch of its bold NFT project aimed at raising funds for the protection of Cross River gorillas. These magnificent gorillas are the rarest on the planet and one of the world’s most critically endangered species, with fewer than 300 individuals remaining in the wild. Hunting and the loss of their forest habitat due to human activities is a major threat to their survival.

The African Conservation Foundation is working to address this crisis by creating protected areas and corridors, whilst also training rangers in monitoring and conservation techniques. With the funds raised from the NFT project, the Foundation will be able to continue its critical work and help ensure the survival of the Cross River gorillas for future generations to enjoy. However, the funds will not only be used to help this special species survive, they will also be used by the charity for general conservation purposes, so donations will be helping animals across the world!

The NFT project will feature a series of 8,001 unique, one-of-a-kind digital art pieces inspired by the Cross River gorillas, African Wild Dogs, and the Okapi. Unlike other NFT projects, the majority of the proceeds will go directly to support the African Conservation Foundation’s work. There will only be 300 Cross River Gorillas for sale to reflect the scarce number left in the wild. 

MILLION DOLLAR NFT

One of the Cross River gorilla NFTs will be sold for a million dollars, offering the buyer a once-in-a-lifetime luxury safari experience, which will be documented in a feature film about the journey. However, purchasers won’t have to spend a million to go on a once-in-a-lifetime trip. Within the Cross River Gorilla collection of 300, there will be 5 randomly assigned NFTs which grant the holder access to a free expedition in Africa (excluding flights) to aid the charity’s work.

“We are thrilled to launch this NFT project on World Wildlife Day and raise awareness for the Cross River gorillas” said Arend de Haas, Executive Director of the African Conservation Foundation. “With the support of the art and NFT community, we hope to raise over $1.2m to preserve the habitats of the incredibly rare Cross River gorillas and secure their future for generations to come.”

NFTs are increasingly being seen as valuable collectibles in the art world, and this project showcases the potential for NFTs to make a significant impact in the world of conservation. Web3 projects have already helped raise funds for conservation initiatives around the world, and this project adds to that momentum, using the power of blockchain technology to help protect endangered species and their habitats.

With only 300 of these magnificent apes left in the world, there are literally more Bored Ape Yacht Club owners than these gorillas – let’s work together to save apes outside the metaverse.

The novel approach to charity fundraising is being delivered in conjunction with web3 start-up ‘We Are Meta’. Henry Eames, MD We Are Meta, “Speaking to the ACF and hearing the urgent need for action we couldn’t help but try this new approach to fundraising.” “We can’t wait to see who will get the Million Dollar Gorilla, but there are thousands of other NFTs starting from just a few dollars. This mission needs support from as many people as possible.”

The NFT project will be available for purchase starting on Earth Day – April 22, and interested parties can learn more and view the available pieces at https://www.300gorillas.com/ today.

ENDS

About The African Conservation Foundation 

The African Conservation Foundation is a non-profit organisation dedicated to the protection and conservation of Africa’s wildlife and its habitats. The Foundation works in close collaboration with local communities, government agencies, and other organisations to implement effective and sustainable conservation programs.

For more information about the African Conservation Foundation and its work, visit https://africanconservation.org/.

Contact

Henry Eames, Managing Director of We Are Meta
+44 (0)7515 380002
Henry@wearemeta.business

Or 

Arend De Haas, Director of the African Conservation Foundation
arend@africanconservation.org

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Through this partnership, ACF will have a global platform to showcase its work and educate people about the plight of endangered animal species in Africa. Ecoflix, which produces and presents inspiring and uplifting videos about animals and the planet, with no commercials of any kind, offers ACF a unique opportunity to raise funds needed to carry out its missions and programs.

Ecoflix

Ecoflix is the first non-profit streaming platform dedicated to saving animals & the planet. It has a focus on promoting awareness and action for animal conservation and environmental restoration. By providing educational content and inspiring viewers to take meaningful actions, Ecoflix aims to contribute to the preservation of the planet and its wildlife.

Founded to help support its partner NGOs, Ecoflix offers an annual subscription of $3.99 a month, which is tax-deductible in the U.S. and qualified for Gift Aid in the U.K. When supporters subscribe for a year and select ACF as their chosen NGO, Ecoflix will donate 100% of the subscription dollars to our programmes.

By subscribing to Ecoflix and selecting ACF as the chosen NGO, supporters can help ACF secure donations of significant size that are hard to secure but extremely important to ACF’s mission. With financial support, ACF will have a much greater ability to save many animals in need of help.

You are one click away from making a difference!

Join Ecoflix today by simply clicking on this link: https://ngo.ecoflix.com/african-conservation-foundation/

When you join, you will receive an email with a link. Choose African Conservation Foundation and Ecoflix will donate 100% of your subscription fee to us on your behalf.

Ecoflix is also free to schools, offering an entire series of shows to educate and inspire “Ecokids.”

By joining Ecoflix and supporting ACF, people can make a difference in the conservation of Africa’s most endangered species while enjoying amazing and beautiful programming about animals and the planet from around the world.

The post Ecoflix Partners with African Conservation Foundation to Save Endangered Species appeared first on African Conservation Foundation.

“There’s mounting evidence that different species pay attention to each other in the wild, especially if they share predators,” said Mike Gil, postdoctoral researcher at UC Davis. “The theory of ecology has lagged behind.”

Gil and co-authors Marissa Basket, associate professor of environmental science and policy, and Sebastian Schreiber, professor of evolution and ecology, outline their new theory in a paper published in the November issue of the journal Ecology.

Gil wants to understand how populations interact with each other and change over time. Traditionally, ecologists have focused on competition between species for food and other resources.

“But we typically leave out the specifics of animal decision making and social behavior,” Gil said.

Ecological frenemies

For example, gazelle, wildebeest or zebra could cue in to the presence of a predator such as a lion by seeing other species react, using the “network” to keep themselves safe. The new model by Gil, Basket and Schreiber is the first to take this kind of short-term information sharing into account at the population level.

“It completely changes the long-term dynamics of the system,” Gil said.

The effects are especially strong at low population densities, he said. When population density is high, the models show, competition between species is a stronger influence. Sheer numbers may also crowd out social cues.

The new theory could clear up some existing puzzles in ecology. For example, how do competing species co-exist without one driving the other out? A bit of help through social interactions could help “frenemies” get along, Gil said.

Technology brings new insights

Advances in technology — including cheaper cameras and sensors, and the computing power to manage large amounts of data — have made it easier than ever to study short-lived interactions between species in the wild, Gil said.

“We can collect data now that we could only dream about a decade ago,” he said. “It’s an exciting time to be a biologist.”

Source: https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/best-frenemies-unexpected-role-social-networks-ecology

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Scientists first observed chimpanzees using tools more than half a century ago. As this complex behaviour appeared to differ across different populations, researchers concluded that tool use in apes was socially learned and therefore a cultural behaviour.

This was the beginning of exploring what behaviours in other species might be considered cultural as well. Killer whale pods and dolphins exhibit different dialects and use tools differently, for instance. Scientists have mostly focused on primates, however. Capuchin monkeys of Central and South America exhibit 13 variants of social customs, to take one example, while different orangutan populations vary their callsand the use of tools, nests or other objects. But no species has garnered more discussion on the presence, importance, and evolution of culture than chimpanzees.

 

Examples of chimpanzee culture range from social customs, such as the way they grasp their hands during grooming, to how males sexually display, to the type of tools used for cracking nuts or ant-dipping. An early study argued that there are as many as 39 different behaviours that are candidates for cultural variation. This set off an eager debate about whether animals have culture or not and how we would be able to detect it.

As in humans, cultural behaviours in chimpanzees are likely critical for individuals to demonstrate community membership. If a young chimpanzee in the Tai forest in the Ivory Coast wants to signal to a peer that they would like to play around, then they build a small, rudimentary ground nest and sit in it. In most other chimpanzee groups, ground nests are mainly used for resting.

Living with humans

But chimpanzees now face the daunting task of surviving in a habitat increasingly infested and assaulted by humans. And as their populations decline, so does their behavioural variation. In short, humans are causing chimpanzee cultural collapse.

Two of us (Alexander and Fiona) were involved in a new study which integrated data from 144 chimpanzee communities across Africa, and found the more that humans had disturbed an area, the less behavioural variants are exhibited by nearby chimpanzees. The results are published in the journal Science.

The actual mechanism behind this is not entirely known. The most obvious explanation is that increased human disturbance means there are fewer chimpanzees overall. Even those that remain have to be more inconspicuous in order to survive in areas where their food and nesting sites are threatened by logging operations, their water sources are polluted by miners, and they risk being hunted for bushmeat by poachers brought into their forests by newly-built roads.

 

All this forces the chimpanzees to forage in smaller groups and use less long distance communication like pan hoots and drumming on tree trunks. This likely leads to a decrease in the spread of cultural behaviours, as associating in smaller group sizes lowers the chance of learning socially from one another.

Chimpanzees have also been observed to adapt to human disturbance by inventing new coping mechanisms such as eating human crops. But despite these rare adaptations, overall human activity is vastly erasing the rich behavioural diversity that now characterises chimpanzees.

Chimpanzee monoculture

But, if the species is gradually merging into a single cultural entity that stretches all the way from Senegal to Tanzania – why does this matter? After all, monocultural species are not inherently problematic. There is no direct relationship between cultural diversity and species distribution, for example. Flies, rats and crocodiles are all disseminated across a vast area, and yet have not yet been described as cultural. Losing chimpanzee behavioural diversity doesn’t itself threaten the species survival.

Losing diversity could be representative of larger issues, however, not least that the species is on the decline, which is the worst scenario. For example, we don’t yet know how adaptive these behaviours are. A loss of behavioural diversity could represent compromises in how animals respond to selection pressures like changes in food availability and how they adapt to climate change.

The risk is that we humans are irreversibly endangering a unique chance to discover the full extent of cultural diversity in our closest living relatives. When scientists discover a new group of wild chimpanzees it often exhibits unique behaviours that have never been observed previously, and it is hard to know what would be eradicated before we know about it.

If things continue as they are, the opportunity to study common evolutionary roots with our own species might soon be forever lost. Making protection of cultural diversity a conservation priority, which extend to numerous other species, would help to ensure the survival of our extraordinary primate heritage.

Alexander Piel, Lecturer in Animal Behaviour, Liverpool John Moores University; Fiona Stewart, Visiting Lecturer in Primatology, Liverpool John Moores University, and Lydia Luncz, Research Fellow, Primate Models for Behavioural Evolution Lab, University of Oxford

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Of the eight pangolin species, four are found in Africa. These are the white‐bellied, black‐bellied, giant, and Temminck’s ground pangolin. Three of these species live in Central African forests. The tree-dwelling white-bellied and black-bellied pangolins, weighing approximately 1.5 to 3kg (comparable to a small rabbit), and the ground-dwelling giant pangolin can weigh up to 33kg (the weight of a small Labrador dog).

But little is known about population sizes, mortality rates, and reproductive potential of African pangolins. Mounting evidence suggests that as the availability of Asian pangolins declines, and international trade flows increase, traders increasingly supply the more abundant and less expensive African pangolins to meet demand.

Seizures of pangolins and their scales and skins from Africa, destined for Asia, are increasing with over 53 tons seized in 2013 alone. These estimates likely represent a fraction of all pangolins traded, and an even smaller portion of the number of pangolins hunted.

To better understand how many pangolins are hunted in Central Africa each year, I and a team of researchers collated information on the quantities of animals that hunting villages extract from the forest, from studies conducted over the last 20 years. By doing this we can provide crucial information on regional trends which can be used to inform conservation actions and policy.

What we found

We looked into the number of animals hunted in villages and offered for sale by collating data from research and reports that covered over 100 areas in sub-Saharan Africa between 1975 and 2014.

We extracted information on whether the animal was eaten or sold, how they were hunted, the sex, age category, and price. Other species typically hunted for meat include blue duikers, brush-tailed porcupines and greater cane rats.

For Central African forests in Cameroon, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Democratic Republic of Congo and Republic of Congo, we estimated that at least 400,000 pangolins are hunted annually for meat.

But we don’t yet know whether pangolins can withstand these levels of hunting. This is mainly because we don’t yet have reliable pangolin population estimates for any of the species that inhabit Central African forests. Ideally, we would also need population and hunting data in the same location to be able to understand the levels of hunting that lead to population declines.

Pressures

The pressures on African pangolins are likely increasing for several reasons.

Firstly, increasing deforestation across West and Central African countries has reduced their habitat, particularly for the semi-arboreal white-bellied pangolin and the arboreal black-bellied pangolin, which rely on forest habitats.

As the human populations grow in West, Eastern and Central Africa, this may exacerbate trends in deforestation and wildlife consumption.

Secondly, increases in the accessibility of remote areas to people and extractive industries may lead to more pangolin hunting. For example, a recent study showed that Asian industry workers in Gabon requested pangolins from hunters more than any other species.

 

Finally, the international trafficking of pangolins over the past decade has boomed. They are one of the most trafficked wild mammals in the world. For example, eight tonnes of pangolin scales trafficked from Nigeria, one of the largest ever hauls of scales, was intercepted a couple of weeks ago in Hong Kong.

Time to act

While the media has greatly increased its coverage of the plight of pangolins in recent years, financial and political support for conservation is still greatly needed. This includes support for pangolin population monitoring, identification of pangolin strongholds and areas in need of conservation, and the identification, design and testing of conservation interventions, where needed.

Without these steps we may see the African pangolins follow in the footsteps of their Asian counterparts.

Daniel J Ingram, Researcher in Conservation, UCL

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The African Conservation Foundation (ACF) and Environment and Rural Development Foundation (ERuDeF), in collaboration with the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife (MINFOF-Cameroon), have since 2004 been working together to secure the long-term survival of the last great apes populations in the Lebialem Highlands. This collaboration led to creating the Tofala Hill Wildlife Sanctuary in 2014, the creation of two out of the four ear-marked community forests in the Tofala-Mone Wildlife Corridor and currently supporting the creation of the proposed Mak-Betchou Wildlife Sanctuary.

Collectively, the Tofala-Mone Wildlife Corridor and the proposed Mak-Betchou Wildlife Sanctuary host over 600 Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees, 40-60 Cross River gorillas, over 100 African forest elephants, populations of Drills, Preuss monkeys, and a host of other globally threatened species that include amphibians, flora and birds. The collective surface area of these three conservation areas stands at 48,163ha.

An increasing number of Cameroon Nigeria Chimpanzees are being captured on camera traps in the Tofala Hill Wildlife Sanctuary. During the last survey in this sanctuary, a large group of 20 chimpanzees was caught on camera trap footage.

This survey, according to ERuDeF’s great apes researcher Gwendolyn Angwa, is an indication that the population of chimpanzee in the area is increasing. “The common size of groups of Nigeria Cameroon chimpanzees is between 4 to 12 individuals. Most of their habitat is fragmented and there is competition for food and mates. In other chimpanzee subspecies, living in other parts of Africa, group size can vary between 2 to 150 individuals.”

The number of chimpanzee is growing as a result of increased birth rate. There is also possible influx of animals from the Mone Forest Reserve through the creation of the Tofala Mone Corridor which we are developing. Groups of chimpanzees can merge to form larger groups when human encroachment, hunting and threats are reduced and food availability is increasing.

Monthly surveillance and patrols are carried out by Government and community rangers which often last 15 days in a month. To this end 6 hunters in the forest adjacent communities have been recruited and trained to participate in forest surveillance and patrol – converting them into conservationists.

According to Forest Research officer Floribert Assongacap, a notice has been issued to all farmers having farmland in the forest to move their farms out of the forest. Alternative sources of income have been developed with local community members by providing training and donation of piglets and bee hives, as well as training of women groups on soap and detergent production.

Snaring, expansion of farmlands and human-wildlife conflicts remain the biggest threats to the chimpanzees, Cross River gorillas and other wildlife in the area. Many cases of plantain destruction by great apes have been recorded in the area. Fortunately, hunting gorillas and chimpanzee in communities around Tofala is a taboo. The local communities involved in the project include four principal ethnic groups namely the Bangwas, Mbos, Mundanis and the Banyangs. According to their culture and traditions, great apes are regarded as totem animals.

Snaring however is a serious problem. “Snares are set in the forest for small mammals such as rats and porcupine, but this turns to injure non-targeted species like the chimpanzee and gorillas,” says Gwendolyn Angwa. “In one of the videos recorded in the last survey, we noticed a chimpanzee with a broken arm and it’s certain that is a result of snares.”Get involved and help the chimpanzees and Cross River gorillas in South West Cameroon. The current Cameroon crisis threatens great apes as displaced people flee to protected areas, clearing forests to build homes and hunting endangered animals for survival.

The situation is so critical that Louis Nkembi, founder ERuDeF and Board Member of the African Conservation Foundation, believes the government should declare an ecological emergency. “In the Lebialem highlands, elephants have been liable to poaching. Now with the crisis, the activity has skyrocketed,” he says. “Endemic endangered apes of Cameroon, especially gorillas and monkeys too are being decimated.”

We can stop the extinction of great apes wildlife – but we need your support. Please donate today so that we can take action now. You can also join us as a volunteer in Cameroon.

The post Large groups of Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees captured on camera trap footage in Tofala Hill Wildlife Sanctuary appeared first on African Conservation Foundation.

Elephants are the world’s most iconic megafauna group, yet until now there was no comprehensive genomic assessment of their relationships. A consortium of scientists, including researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Harvard Medical School, Uppsala University, the University of Potsdam, McMaster University, and the University of Illinois, used advanced sequencing technology to recover complete genomes from both living and extinct elephant species.

In the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the authors generated 14 genomes, including two from the American mastodon, which is an extinct elephant relative, and 12 from both living and extinct elephants species including an 120,000-y-old straight-tusked elephant, a Columbian mammoth, and woolly mammoths.

Earlier genetic studies modelled elephant evolution via simple branching trees, but this study shows that interspecies hybridization has been a recurrent feature of elephant evolution.

“This paper, the product of a grand initiative we started more than a decade ago, is far more than just the formal report of the elephant genome. It will be a reference point for understanding how diverse elephants are related to each other and it will be a model for conducting similar studies in other species groups,” said co-senior author Kerstin Lindblad-Toh, a senior director of vertebrate genomics at the Broad Institute and professor in comparative genomics at Uppsala University in Sweden.

“There’s been a simmering debate in the conservation communities about whether African savannah and forest elephants are two different species,” said David Reich, another co-senior author at the Broad Institute who is also a professor at the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. “Our data show that these two species have been isolated for long periods of time, making each worthy of independent conservation status.”

The researchers found that the genetic makeup of the straight-tusked elephant, previously placed as a sister group to African forest elephants, in fact comprises three major components. Most of the straight-tusked elephant’s ancestry derives from a lineage related to the ancestor of African elephants while its remaining ancestry consists of a large contribution from a lineage related to forest elephants and another related to mammoths.

Columbian and woolly mammoths also showed evidence of interbreeding. While hybridization events have contributed to elephant evolution, isolation also played an important role.

The study data reveal nearly complete isolation between the ancestors of the African forest and savanna elephants for 500,000 years. The study confirms that the African savannah and forest elephants are two distinct species, findings that should help to make the case to protect both.

The post Comprehensive genetic study finds justification to recognise forest and savanna elephants as separate species appeared first on African Conservation Foundation.

The park’s violent past intrigued Daskin, then a first-year Princeton graduate student in ecology and evolutionary biology. As he explored the savannas and grasslands of Gorongosa with his advisor, Robert Pringle, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, they discussed whether similar wildlife declines might have occurred across Africa during the many conflicts of the 20th century. If so, they wondered how severe the impacts had been, and if animals generally retain the capacity to rebound like those in Gorongosa had, or if war was a human pressure that most animals just couldn’t withstand.

After years of examining conflict in Africa’s protected areas, Daskin and Pringle reported in the Jan. 10 issue of the journal Nature that war has been a consistent factor in the decades-long decline of large mammals in Africa. Populations that were stable in peaceful areas needed only a slight increase in conflict frequency to begin a downward spiral. But, the researchers report, while wildlife populations declined in conflict areas, they rarely collapsed to the point where recovery was impossible.

The researchers found that more than 70 percent of Africa’s protected areas were touched by war between 1946 and 2010, an era during which the overthrow of European colonial rule was followed in many countries by violent post-colonial power struggles. Elephants, hippos, giraffes and other large mammals perished as combatants and hungry citizens hunted animals for meat and for marketable commodities such as ivory.

Nonetheless, said Daskin, who completed the study as part of his doctoral dissertation at Princeton, the findings show that even those protected areas most severely affected by conflict remain promising candidates for conservation and rehabilitation efforts. The study was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Princeton Environmental Institute (PEI).

“We hope our data and conclusions will help in the effort to prioritize these areas for attention and funding from their governments and from international NGOs,” said Daskin, now a Donnelley Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University. “We’re presenting evidence that although mammal populations decline in war zones, they don’t often go extinct. With the right policies and resources, it should often be possible to reverse the declines and restore functional ecosystems, even in historically conflict-prone areas.”

The study was needed to establish a general scientific expectation about how conflict typically affects wildlife populations, said Pringle, who is associated faculty in PEI.

“It wasn’t obvious to us in advance that conflict would have negative effects on wildlife populations,” Pringle said. “Different studies of different places at different times have found both positive and negative effects of conflict on biodiversity, but the overall net effect had never been measured.” For instance, previous research has shown that animal populations have increased in contested regions such as the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and rural Zimbabwe during that country’s Bush War of 1964–1979.

Daskin and Pringle, however, found that with few exceptions, frequent conflict resulted in a downward trend among large-animal populations. No other factor they evaluated exhibited the same consistent effect. There was no statistically detectable effect on wildlife trajectories from mining, urban development, corruption, drought, or even the intensity of the conflict as measured by the number of human battle fatalities.

“This enabled us to make some educated guesses about what the underlying mechanisms might be,” Daskin said. “Most of the effects of conflict on wildlife populations seem to be due to knock-on socioeconomic effects that degrade the institutional capacity for biodiversity conservation, or the collective societal ability to prioritize and pay for it.”

Hugh Possingham, the chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy, concurred that social structures ultimately determine the fate of animals and protected areas. Possingham had no role in the research but is familiar with it and has published on related topics.

“The most surprising finding is the strength of the relationship between the presence of conflict and declines in large mammals,” Possingham said. “One might have imagined that the magnitude or scale of conflict would be the driver, but the mere presence of conflict seems to be a strong predictor in its own right.

“This is unusual and useful,” he continued. “It suggests to me that any sort of conflict needs to be avoided, even if it’s at a low level, and such conflicts may be indicative of broader social and institutional problems that are the primary drivers of mammal declines. Bottom line — to stop threats such as bushmeat hunting, governance really has to be strong.”

Daskin and Pringle found that 71 percent of Africa’s protected areas experienced one or more conflicts from 1946 to 2010. For a quarter of these areas, wars occurred for an average of nine or more years. Several large nations experienced an average of 20 or more years of conflict per protected area, including Chad, Namibia and Sudan (before it split into Sudan and South Sudan in 2011).

To conduct the analysis, Daskin drew from nearly 500 sources to find estimates of a specific animal species’ abundance from at least two years between 1946 and 2010. He compared those estimates in order to calculate the change in population density during a given time interval. Daskin then used a series of databases to identify how many conflicts overlapped with each of Africa’s protected areas during the study interval. In the end, the researchers examined the trends of 253 animal populations representing 36 species, ranging from antelopes to elephants, in 126 protected areas across 19 countries.

“No one else had made the effort to assemble conflict data across this range of parks and make them talk with the wildlife data,” Daskin said. “These data were all freely available, but not always highly accessible.”

Gorongosa, the park in Mozambique that originally inspired the study, exemplifies the thrust of the findings, Daskin and Pringle said. From 1977 to 1992, government soldiers, anti-government militias, and refugees alternately fought in or fled through the park. For years after the war, displaced and dispossessed residents hunted wildlife. By the early 2000s, the elephant population had crashed by more than 75 percent, while successive aerial counts found that buffalo, hippo, wildebeest and zebra numbers were hovering in the single or double digits.

Yet none of these animal populations disappeared completely. Since 2004, wildlife in Gorongosa have rebounded to 80 percent of their total pre-war abundance. Park staff, the Mozambican government and the nonprofit Gorongosa Restoration Project have worked with neighboring communities to nurture the remnant animal populations by suppressing illegal hunting and creating educational and employment opportunities for villagers within the park.

“Our results show that the case of Gorongosa could be general,” said Pringle, who serves on the board of the Gorongosa Project. “Gorongosa is as close as you can come to wiping out a whole fauna without extinguishing it, and even there we’re seeing that we can rehabilitate wildlife populations and regrow a functional ecosystem. That suggests that the other high-conflict sites in our study can, at least in principle, also be rehabilitated.”

Pringle and Daskin emphasized in their paper that wildlife recovery rests in the hands of local people. “I would love to see conservation and humanitarian organizations collaborate on post-conflict relief work,” Pringle said. “Long-term recovery hinges on the health and hopefulness of the people, and healthy environments catalyze human health and hope. It’s a positive-feedback loop.”

When people have a personal and economic stake in a thriving ecosystem, they embrace protective behaviors such as preventing poaching and monitoring wildlife, Possingham said. “This publication confirms the philosophy behind that approach,” he said.

“In any area where large-mammal protection is a concern, one has to get the people-side of the conservation initiative sorted — establishing alternative livelihoods, law and order, education, anti-corruption, etc. — at the same time as taking habitat-protection and anti-poaching actions on the ground,” he said. “If you don’t tackle the ultimate drivers such as a breakdown of civil society, then taking action on the ground and investing in park management might not work.”

The paper, “Warfare and wildlife declines in Africa’s protected areas,” was published online by Nature on Jan. 10. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (grant nos. DEB-1501306, DEB-1355122 and DEB-1457697) and the Princeton Environmental Institute’s Grand Challenges program (project title: “Ecosystem Spatial Pattern and Development Opportunities in African Rangelands”).

Story Source:

Materials provided by Princeton University. Author: Morgan Kelly.

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