Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
Am J Primatol. 2019 Sep;81(9):e23042. doi: 10.1002/ajp.23042. Epub 2019 Aug 29.
As animal populations continue to decline, frequently driven by large-scale land-use change, there is a critical need for improved environmental planning. While data-driven spatial planning is widely applied in conservation, as of yet it is rarely used for primates. The western chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus) declined by 80% within 24 years and was uplisted to Critically Endangered by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species in 2016. To support conservation planning for western chimpanzees, we systematically identified geographic areas important for this taxon. We based our analysis on a previously published data set of modeled density distribution and on several scenarios that accounted for different spatial scales and conservation targets. Across all scenarios, typically less than one-third of areas we identified as important are currently designated as high-level protected areas (i.e., national park or IUCN category I or II). For example, in the scenario for protecting 50% of all chimpanzees remaining in West Africa (i.e., approximately 26,500 chimpanzees), an area of approximately 60,000 km was selected (i.e., approximately 12% of the geographic range), only 24% of which is currently designated as protected areas. The derived maps can be used to inform the geographic prioritization of conservation interventions, including protected area expansion, "no-go-zones" for industry and infrastructure, and conservation sites outside the protected area network. Environmental guidelines by major institutions funding infrastructure and resource extraction projects explicitly require corporations to minimize the negative impact on great apes. Therefore, our results can inform avoidance and mitigation measures during the planning phases of such projects. This study was designed to inform future stakeholder consultation processes that could ultimately integrate the conservation of western chimpanzees with national land-use priorities. Our approach may help in promoting similar work for other primate taxa to inform systematic conservation planning in times of growing threats.
随着动物种群数量持续下降，尤其是在大规模土地利用变化的驱动下，人们迫切需要改善环境规划。尽管数据驱动的空间规划在保护领域得到了广泛应用，但迄今为止，它很少用于灵长类动物。西部黑猩猩（Pan troglodytes verus）在 24 年内数量减少了 80%，并于 2016 年被 IUCN 濒危物种红色名录列为极危物种。为了支持西部黑猩猩的保护规划，我们系统地确定了对该物种重要的地理区域。我们的分析基于先前发表的模型密度分布数据集，以及几个考虑不同空间尺度和保护目标的情景。在所有情景中，我们确定的重要区域中，通常不到三分之一被指定为高级别的保护区（即国家公园或 IUCN 类别 I 或 II）。例如，在保护西非剩余的所有黑猩猩的 50%（即大约 26500 只黑猩猩）的情景下，选择了大约 60000 平方公里的区域（即地理范围的大约 12%），其中只有 24%被指定为保护区。派生的地图可用于为保护干预措施提供地理优先级，包括保护区的扩展、工业和基础设施的“禁入区”以及保护区网络外的保护地点。为基础设施和资源开采项目提供资金的主要机构的环境准则明确要求企业尽量减少对大型类人猿的负面影响。因此，我们的结果可以为这些项目的规划阶段提供避免和缓解措施的信息。本研究旨在为未来的利益相关者咨询过程提供信息，最终将西部黑猩猩的保护纳入国家土地利用优先事项。我们的方法可以帮助推动其他灵长类动物的类似工作，以便在威胁日益严重的情况下为系统保护规划提供信息。
