Lignes directrices pour de meilleures pratiques en matière d’inventaire et de suivi des populations de grands singes

From Executive Summary: The combination of threats currently facing the remaining great apes requires immediate conservation action at all scales — from site-level initiatives, through national and regional strategies, to international conventions and action plans. Baseline density estimates and subsequent monitoring of ape populations are essential for assessing the impacts of particular threats and measuring whether conservation programmes are succeeding.  Available at: https://portals.iucn.org/library/node/922

Best Practice Guidelines for Surveys and Monitoring of Great Ape Populations

First paragraph: Les menaces qui touchent aujourd'hui les grands singes appellent à des actions immédiates de conservation à tous les niveaux : initiatives locales, stratégies nationales et régionales, conventions internationales et plans d'action. Une estimation préalable de la densité des grands singes est nécessaire pour avoir une base de suivi des impacts de menaces spécifiques et pour évaluer le succès des programmes de conservation

Lignes directrices pour de meilleures pratiques en matiere d’inventaire et de suivi des populations de grands singes

First paragraph: Les menaces qui touchent aujourd'hui les grands singes appellent à des actions immédiates de conservation à tous les niveaux : initiatives locales, stratégies nationales et régionales, conventions internationales et plans d'action. Une estimation préalable de la densité des grands singes est nécessaire pour avoir une base de suivi des impacts de menaces spécifiques et pour évaluer le succès des programmes de conservation

Abundance Annex: Ape Population Abundance Estimates

In this online-only annex, ape population abundance estimates are presented at the level of a protected area and/or its buffer zone, a logging concession or group of concessions, or any discrete area where a survey has taken place in the past two decades

Ape Population Abundance Estimates

In this online-only annex, ape population abundance estimates are presented at the level of a protected area and/or its buffer zone, a logging concession or group of concessions, or any discrete area where a survey has taken place in the past two decades

Human impact erodes chimpanzee behavioral diversity

Chimpanzees possess a large number of behavioral and cultural traits among non-human species. The ‘disturbance hypothesis’ predicts that human impact depletes resources and disrupts social learning processes necessary for behavioral and cultural transmission. We used an unprecedented data set of 144 chimpanzee communities, with information on 31 behaviors, to show that chimpanzees inhabiting areas with high human impact have a mean probability of occurrence reduced by 88%, across all behaviors, compared to low impact areas. This behavioral diversity loss was evident irrespective of the grouping or categorization of behaviors. Therefore, human impact may not only be associated with the loss of populations and genetic diversity, but also affects how animals behave. Our results support the view that ‘culturally significant units’ should be integrated into wildlife conservation.Additional co-authors: Mattia Bessone, Gregory Brazzola, Rebecca Chancellor, Heather Cohen, Charlotte Coupland, Emmanuel Danquah, Tobias Deschner, Orume Diotoh, Dervla Dowd, Andrew Dunn, Villard Ebot Egbe, Henk Eshuis, Rumen Fernandez, Yisa Ginath, Annemarie Goedmakers, Anne-Céline Granjon, Josephine Head, Daniela Hedwig, Veerle Hermans, Inaoyom Imong, Sorrel Jones, Jessica Junker, Parag Kadam, Mbangi Kambere, Mohamed Kambi, Ivonne Kienast, Deo Kujirakwinja, Kevin Langergraber, Juan Lapuente, Bradley Larson, Kevin Lee, Vera Leinert, Manuel Llana, Giovanna Maretti, Sergio Marrocoli, Tanyi Julius Mbi, Amelia C. Meier, David Morgan, Felix Mulindahabi, Mizuki Murai, Emily Neil, Protais Niyigaba, Lucy Jayne Ormsby, Liliana Pacheco, Alex Piel, Jodie Preece, Sebastien Regnaut, Aaron Rundus, Crickette Sanz, Joost van Schijndel, Volker Sommer, Fiona Stewart, Nikki Tagg, Elleni Vendras, Virginie Vergnes, Adam Welsh, Erin G. Wessling, Jacob Willie, Roman M. Wittig, Kyle Yurkiw, Klaus Zuberbuehler, Ammie K. Kala

PanAf20K: A Large Video Dataset for Wild Ape Detection and Behaviour Recognition

We present the PanAf20K dataset, the largest and most diverse open-access annotated video dataset of great apes in their natural environment. It comprises more than 7 million frames across ~20,000 camera trap videos of chimpanzees and gorillas collected at 14 field sites in tropical Africa as part of the Pan African Programme: The Cultured Chimpanzee. The footage is accompanied by a rich set of annotations and benchmarks making it suitable for training and testing a variety of challenging and ecologically important computer vision tasks including ape detection and behaviour recognition. Furthering AI analysis of camera trap information is critical given the International Union for Conservation of Nature now lists all species in the great ape family as either Endangered or Critically Endangered. We hope the dataset can form a solid basis for engagement of the AI community to improve performance, efficiency, and result interpretation in order to support assessments of great ape presence, abundance, distribution, and behaviour and thereby aid conservation efforts.Comment: Accepted at IJC

Effective non-invasive genetic monitoring of multiple wild western gorilla groups

Obtaining reliable population size or abundance estimates of endangered species is critical for their conservation and management. Genotyping non-invasively collected samples is an effective way to gain insights into the number and grouping patterns of rare or elusive animals. In this study we used genetic capture-recapture estimators to obtain a precise estimate of the size of a western gorilla population inhabiting an intensely sampled 101 km2 area in Loango National Park, Gabon. Using 394 putative gorilla samples collected opportunistically over a 3 year period, we identified 83 unique genotypes. We used a rarefaction curve, Bayesian estimator and two maximum-likelihood methods to estimate that between 87 and 107 individuals used the study area between February 2005 and September 2007. The confidence interval surrounding the genetic estimate was smaller than that obtained using traditional ape survey methods. In addition, genetic analysis showed that gorilla and chimpanzee faeces were identified with 98% and 95% accuracy in the field, respectively. Patterns of co-occurrence of individual gorillas suggest that at least 11 gorilla social groups and five lone silverback males lived in the study area and that several individuals transferred between groups during the 3-year study period. When properly designed and implemented as part of a long-term biomonitoring program, genetic capture-recapture should prove an invaluable tool for evaluating, even on a large-scale, the population size and dynamics of apes and other elusive species