Suchergebnisse

Macroecological analyses capture the widespread nature of wild mammal range contractions and population declines globally, with Neotropical rainforests particularly vulnerable. Yet there is a paucity of basic population biology data capturing local empirically observed population changes. We generated species-specific and aggregated temporal trends in populations of terrestrial mammals in Cusuco National Park, north-west Honduras testing the effects of body-size, hunting and zonal protection measures. Hunted species, regardless of body size, exhibited declines (ca. -7% per year) with greater rapidity of decline in the park's more accessible and less rigorously protected buffer zone. The site was once regarded as a remaining strong of Baird's tapir (Tapirus bairdii), IUCN Red Listed as Endangered, but our data suggest its near local extirpation from monitored sites. Hunted deer (Mazama temama and Odocoileus virginianus) and paca (Cuniculus paca) also declined substantially. Whilst species-specific trends varied among unhunted species (e.g. wild cats, mustelids etc.) they, nevertheless, also exhibited an aggregated decline throughout the park (ca. -6% per year). Such was the rapidity of these declines that we estimate substaintial mammalian defaunation of Cusuco National Park by the mid-2020s leaving a notionally highly protected area mostly devoid of terrestrial mammals and the associated ecosystem services they deliver (so-called 'empty forest syndrome'). We call on Governments and non-governmental organizations including conservation charities to prioritize urgent efforts to secure funding and personnel to ensure designated areas are adequately protected with enforcement of existing legislative protection whether through patrols or capacity building to efficiently curtail ongoing defaunation.

Terrestrial mammals are important ecosystem engineers in rainforest but threaten by deforestation and hunting even in areas with the highest level of designated protection e.g. National Parks. Species Distribution Models (SDMs) can be used to identify priority areas for vulnerable species informing the spatial allocation of conservation resources. Local SDMs do not rely on defining positive relationships that determine a species' optimal environmental niche but the negative relationships describing parochial species absence. Using species-specific field tracks and signs data from 2006 to 2017 for mammals in Cusuco National Park, Merendón mountain range, Honduras, we built local SDMs for each species extrapolating the probability of occurrence throughout unsurveyed areas. We pooled predicted probabilities within species groups for i) low abundance, large-bodied, hunted species (e.g. tapir, deer or peccaries), ii) high abundance, small-bodied hunted species (e.g. paca or agouti) and iii) unhunted species (e.g. mustelids or wild cats). Results suggest that that despite the highest level of protected area designation local terrestrial mammal distribution was driven by local anthropogenic disturbance; specifically, deforestation within 2km, distance to the National Park boundary and distance to human populations i.e. villages, ecotourism camps and research stations. Local villages were ranked in descending order of their likely impact on large hunted mammals such that local Government departments, forestry managers, conservation organisations and patrolling wardens can use this information to target protection efforts (patrols, legislative enforcement and prosecutions) to maximise the efficacy of National Park designation and stem ongoing defaunation.

Recently, the World Health Organization recognized that efforts to interrupt schistosomiasis transmission through mass drug administration have been ineffective in some regions; one of their new recommended strategies for global schistosomiasis control emphasizes targeting the freshwater snails that transmit schistosome parasites. We sought to identify robust indicators that would enable precision targeting of these snails. At the site of the world's largest recorded schistosomiasis epidemic-the Lower Senegal River Basin in Senegal-intensive sampling revealed positive relationships between intermediate host snails (abundance, density, and prevalence) and human urogenital schistosomiasis reinfection (prevalence and intensity in schoolchildren after drug administration). However, we also found that snail distributions were so patchy in space and time that obtaining useful data required effort that exceeds what is feasible in standard monitoring and control campaigns. Instead, we identified several environmental proxies that were more effective than snail variables for predicting human infection: the area covered by suitable snail habitat (i.e., floating, nonemergent vegetation), the percent cover by suitable snail habitat, and size of the water contact area. Unlike snail surveys, which require hundreds of person-hours per site to conduct, habitat coverage and site area can be quickly estimated with drone or satellite imagery. This, in turn, makes possible large-scale, high-resolution estimation of human urogenital schistosomiasis risk to support targeting of both mass drug administration and snail control efforts. ; Michigan Society of Fellows at the University of Michigan; Sloan Research Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; Wellcome TrustWellcome Trust [104958/Z/14/Z]; Bill and Melinda Gates FoundationGates Foundation [OPP1114050]; Stanford University Woods Institute for the Environment; Stanford Institute for Innovation in Developing Econ-omies Global Development and Poverty Initiative grant from the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University; National Institutes of HealthUnited States Department of Health & Human ServicesNational Institutes of Health (NIH) - USA [R01TW010286]; National Science FoundationNational Science Foundation (NSF) [1414102] ; We are grateful to the laboratory and field technicians who contributed to data collection, including Pape Gueye, Assane Fall, Alassane Ndiaye, Souleymane Sow, Cheikh Thiam, Momar Guindo, and Achile Diatta. C.L.W. was supported by the Michigan Society of Fellows at the University of Michigan and by a Sloan Research Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. F.A. and M.R. were supported by Wellcome Trust (Schistosomiasis Collections at the Natural History Museum Project 104958/Z/14/Z). G.A.D.L., S.H.S., M.J., I.J.J., A.J.C., and A.J.L. were supported by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (OPP1114050), a 2018 Environmental Venture Program grant from the Stanford University Woods Institute for the Environment, a Stanford Institute for Innovation in Developing Econ-omies Global Development and Poverty Initiative grant from the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University, a grant from the National Institutes of Health (R01TW010286), and a grant from the National Science Foundation (1414102). Any use of trade, product, or firm names in this publication is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the US Government. ; Public domain authored by a U.S. government employee

Cloud forests are amongst the most biologically unique, yet threatened, ecosystems in Mesoamerica. We summarize the ecological value and conservation status of a well-studied cloud forest site: Cusuco National Park (CNP), a 23,440 ha protected area in the Merendón mountains, northwest Honduras. We show cnp to have exceptional biodiversity; of 966 taxa identified to a species-level to date, 362 (37.5%) are Mesoamerican endemics, 67 are red-listed by the IUCN, and at least 49 are micro-endemics known only from the Merendón range. CNP also provides key ecosystem services including provision of drinking water and downstream flood mitigation, as well as carbon sequestration, with an estimated stock of 3.5 million megagrams of carbon in 2000. Despite its ecological importance, CNP faces multiple environmental threats and associated stresses, including deforestation (1,759 ha since 2000 equating to 7% of total forest area), poaching (7% loss of mammal relative abundance per year), amphibian declines due to chytridiomycosis (70% of species threatened or near-threatened), and climate change (a mean 2.6 °C increase in temperature and 112 mm decrease in rainfall by 2100). Despite conservation actions, including community ranger patrols, captive-breeding programmes, and ecotourism initiatives, environmental degradation of CNP continues. Further action is urgently required, including reinforcement and expansion of ranger programmes, greater stakeholder engagement, community education programmes, development of alternative livelihood projects, and legislative enforcement and prosecution. Without a thorough and rapid response to understand and mitigate illegal activities, the extirpation and extinction of species and the loss of vital ecosystem services are inevitable in the coming decades.