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

African golden cats, citizen science, and serendipity: tapping the camera trap revolution

The use of camera traps for wildlife research and monitoring is increasing and this is yielding significant observations at an accelerating pace. Yet many potentially valuable observations are overlooked, misinterpreted or withheld. Using our first-ever images of a wild African golden cat (Caracal aurata) catching prey, we consider practical challenges and opportunities for more effective image management systems. In particular we highlight the benefits of online image archives and assessments

WPI.

<p>Overall (a), frequency histogram of occupancy trends and population occupancy status (b), and WPI by site and landscape (c). Shading depicts 50th and 80th (a) or 80th (c) percentile intervals. Labels (c) represent site codes (<a href="http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002357#pbio.1002357.s009" target="_blank">S1 Table</a>). The WPI Analytics System is accessible at <a href="http://wpi.teamnetwork.org" target="_blank">http://wpi.teamnetwork.org</a>. Public access allows anyone to monitor ground-dwelling trends of mammal and bird species in these protected areas. See <a href="http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002357#pbio.1002357.s012" target="_blank">S4 Table</a> for numerical data for Fig 2A, <a href="http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002357#pbio.1002357.s010" target="_blank">S2 Table</a> for Fig 2B, and <a href="http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002357#pbio.1002357.s013" target="_blank">S5 Table</a> for Fig 2C.</p