Status of Grauer’s Gorilla and Chimpanzees in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo: Historical and Current Distribution and Abundance

This report summarises the current state of knowledge on the distribution, densities and trends in abundance of Grauer’s gorilla (Gorilla beringei graueri) and the eastern chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It summarises the historical knowledge about the distribution of Grauer’s gorilla across its range and describes the development of a Conservation Action Plan (CAP) for these two ape species. A result of this CAP was funding to undertake an assessment of the current status of these apes across the range of Grauer’s gorilla. Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Fauna & Flora International (FFI) worked with Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (ICCN) and the Reserve managers of the Reserve des Gorilles de Punia (RGPU) and local communities to undertake surveys across the region using a variety of methods: line transects, recces along paths and patrol data from data collected by rangers while on patrol and entered into SMART software

Multi-taxa spatial conservation planning reveals similar priorities between taxa and improved protected area representation with climate change

Protected area (PA) networks have in the past been constructed to include all major habitats, but have often been developed through consideration of only a few indicator taxa or across restricted areas, and rarely account for global climate change. Systematic conservation planning (SCP) aims to improve the efficiency of biodiversity conservation, particularly when addressing internationally agreed protection targets. We apply SCP in Great Britain (GB) using the widest taxonomic coverage to date (4,447 species), compare spatial prioritisation results across 18 taxa and use projected future (2080) distributions to assess the potential impact of climate change on PA network effectiveness. Priority conservation areas were similar among multiple taxa, despite considerable differences in spatial species richness patterns; thus systematic prioritisations based on indicator taxa for which data are widely available are still useful for conservation planning. We found that increasing the number of protected hectads by 2% (to reach the 2020 17% Aichi target) could have a disproportionate positive effect on species protected, with an increase of up to 17% for some taxa. The PA network in GB currently under-represents priority species but, if the potential future distributions under climate change are realised, the proportion of species distributions protected by the current PA network may increase, because many PAs are in northern and higher altitude areas. Optimal locations for new PAs are particularly concentrated in southern and upland areas of GB. This application of SCP shows how a small addition to an existing PA network could have disproportionate benefits for species conservation

Catastrophic Decline of World's Largest Primate: 80% Loss of Grauer's Gorilla (Gorilla beringei graueri) Population Justifies Critically Endangered Status

Grauer's gorilla (Gorilla beringei graueri), the World's largest primate, is confined to eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and is threatened by civil war and insecurity. During the war, armed groups in mining camps relied on hunting bushmeat, including gorillas. Insecurity and the presence of several militia groups across Grauer's gorilla's range made it very difficult to assess their population size. Here we use a novel method that enables rigorous assessment of local community and ranger-collected data on gorilla occupancy to evaluate the impacts of civil war on Grauer's gorilla, which prior to the war was estimated to number 16,900 individuals. We show that gorilla numbers in their stronghold of Kahuzi- Biega National Park have declined by 87%. Encounter rate data of gorilla nests at 10 sites across its range indicate declines of 82-100% at six of these sites. Spatial occupancy analysis identifies three key areas as the most critical sites for the remaining populations of this ape and that the range of this taxon is around 19,700 km2. We estimate that only 3,800 Grauer's gorillas remain in the wild, a 77% decline in one generation, justifying its elevation to Critically Endangered status on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species

Global extent and drivers of mammal population declines in protected areas under illegal hunting pressure

Illegal hunting is a persistent problem in many protected areas, but an overview of the extent of this problem and its impact on wildlife is lacking. We reviewed 40 years (1980–2020) of global research to examine the spatial distribution of research and socio-ecological factors influencing population decline within protected areas under illegal hunting pressure. From 81 papers reporting 988 species/site combinations, 294 mammal species were reported to have been illegally hunted from 155 protected areas across 48 countries. Research in illegal hunting has increased substantially during the review period and showed biases towards strictly protected areas and the African continent. Population declines were most frequent in countries with a low human development index, particularly in strict protected areas and for species with a body mass over 100 kg. Our results provide evidence that illegal hunting is most likely to cause declines of large-bodied species in protected areas of resource-poor countries regardless of protected area conservation status. Given the growing pressures of illegal hunting, increased investments in people’s development and additional conservation efforts such as improving anti-poaching strategies and conservation resources in terms of improving funding and personnel directed at this problem are a growing priority

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Ecological patterns and predictors of parasite sharing among domestic and wild mammals

Multi-host pathogens of domestic and wild mammals have significant socio-economic, animal health and conservation consequences. However, despite the interest in diseases at this interface, most research has focused on only a few key pathogens. Studies of focal systems provide limited information on the broad scale ecological patterns of pathogen occurrence and the factors that might drive these distributions, yet large scale studies may have important consequences for disease control and pathogen surveillance. This thesis aims to quantify the abundance and distribution of pathogen sharing among domestic and wild mammals, and develop and understanding of the processes that determine this distribution. Using comparative methods and comprehensive databases this thesis provides the first systematic assessment, on a global scale, of which domestic mammal pathogens have been reported in wild mammals in natural settings. Assessing the extent of pathogen sharing and the characteristics of the pathogens involved showed that the occurrence of domestic mammal pathogens in wild mammals was greater than previously recorded, with an additional 28.5% of domestic pathogens reported to infect wild hosts. Pathogens with the broadest host range had the greatest sharing probability and, in general, pathogen transmission strategies did not limit the degree of sharing. Importantly, from analysing reporting trends, the majority of shared pathogens are already likely to be known, but these are still being reported from novel host-parasite combinations suggesting that the opportunities for pathogen transmission continue to occur, especially since the majority of pathogens have been reported in wildlife multiple times. Most wild ungulates (artiodactyla and perissodactyla) have evidence of infection with domestic livestock parasites, and these hosts are also dominated by those more closely related to livestock. However, phylogenetic relatedness did not appear to be a barrier of infection. The diversity of sympatric wild species was associated with a greater proportion of shared viruses and bacteria, but a lower proportion of shared helminths. These differences among parasite groups are potentially due to variation in parasite transmission strategies. Hosts of conservation concern were not more likely to be infected with domestic mammal pathogens than un-threatened species, suggesting that domestic hosts do not directly contribute to parasite driven declines of wild mammals. Assessing the spatial reporting of wild mammal parasites and what global environmental drivers determines the occurrence of shared parasites may have important implications for disease control and surveillance. Although there are bias in reporting, the majority of wild mammal sampling locations reported pathogens also found in domestic mammals. Livestock densities did not predict the occurrence of pathogens in wild ungulates, but human densities (a proxy for domestic carnivores) did predict the occurrence of pathogens in wild carnivores. For both host groups economic variables were also informative. The probability of parasite sharing was lower in protected area systems, suggesting that these areas may have an valuable role in wildlife disease management. Pathogen sharing among domestic and wild mammals is ubiquitous. Therefore, systematic surveillance for shared pathogens or those shared pathogens that are likely to cross the species barrier in the future is arguably not beneficial. Instead, the informative drivers determined from this macro-ecological analysis, and the identification of areas and hosts that have an increase risk of pathogen sharing may help inform disease management and surveillance strategies

Dogs, disease and wildlife

No abstract available