Do primate action plans work?

John Oates authored the first primate conservation Action Plan in 1986, which assessed the status of and proposed conservation actions for all mainland African primate species. A revised version of the continent-wide plan was published in 1996, but since then, action plans have generally evolved into prioritizing actions for specific species, often within defined landscapes. We will review and evaluate the content and success of conservation action plans for the nine currently recognized taxa of chimpanzees and gorillas in Africa. Since 2003, six detailed action plans and one population viability analysis have been published, covering priority actions and landscapes for seven of the nine great ape taxa in Africa. Two further action plans (for gorillas and chimpanzees in Eastern DRC and for bonobos) are in the final stages of review and may also be included in the analysis. Assessments for western chimpanzees, Cross River gorillas, western lowland gorillas and central chimpanzees have been peer reviewed, and we will consider their recommendations and the challenges of quantitatively evaluating the success of primate conservation action plans

The Critically Endangered western chimpanzee declines by 80%

African large mammals are under extreme pressure from unsustainable hunting and habitat loss. Certain traits make large mammals particularly vulnerable. These include late age at first reproduction, long inter-birth intervals, and low population density. Great apes are a prime example of such vulnerability, exhibiting all of these traits. Here we assess the rate of population change for the western chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes verus, over a 24-year period. As a proxy for change in abundance, we used transect nest count data from 20 different sites archived in the IUCN SSC A.P.E.S. database, representing 25,000 of the estimated remaining 35,000 western chimpanzees. For each of the 20 sites, datasets for 2 different years were available. We estimated site-specific and global population change using Generalized Linear Models. At 12 of these sites, we detected a significant negative trend. The estimated change in the subspecies abundance, as approximated by nest encounter rate, yielded a 6% annual decline and a total decline of 80.2% over the study period from 1990 to 2014. This also resulted in a reduced geographic range of 20% (657,600 vs. 524,100 km2). Poverty, civil conflict, disease pandemics, agriculture, extractive industries, infrastructure development, and lack of law enforcement, are some of the many reasons for the magnitude of threat. Our status update triggered the uplisting of the western chimpanzee to “Critically Endangered” on the IUCN Red List. In 2017, IUCN will start updating the 2003 Action Plan for western chimpanzees and will provide a consensus blueprint for what is needed to save this subspecies. We make a plea for greater commitment to conservation in West Africa across sectors. Needed especially is more robust engagement by national governments, integration of conservation priorities into the private sector and development planning across the region and sustained financial support from donors.Additional co-authors: Emma Normand, Kathryn Shutt-Phillips, Alexander Tickle, Elleni Vendras, Adam Welsh, Erin G. Wessling, Christophe Boesc

Tapanuli orangutan endangered by Sumatran hydropower scheme

The Tapanuli orangutan survives today in less than 1,200 km of rainforest in northern Sumatra, Indonesia, in an area known as Batang Toru, where it was scientifically discovered in 1997. Teeming with endangered fauna and flora, the Batang Toru forest has been partially felled and fragmented and parts of the remainder allocated to agriculture, mining, hydropower and geothermal-energy production. The Tapanuli orangutan is estimated to number just 767 individuals, divided among three subpopulations. Its total remaining habitat 10 is merely a tenth the size of Sydney, Australia

Great Apes and Biodiversity Offset Projects in Africa: The Case for National Offset Strategies

The development and private sectors are increasingly considering “biodiversity offsets” as a strategy to compensate for their negative impacts on biodiversity, including impacts on great apes and their habitats in Africa. In the absence of national offset policies in sub-Saharan Africa, offset design and implementation are guided by company internal standards, lending bank standards or international best practice principles. We examine four projects in Africa that are seeking to compensate for their negative impacts on great ape populations. Our assessment of these projects reveals that not all apply or implement best practices, and that there is little standardization in the methods used to measure losses and gains in species numbers. Even if they were to follow currently accepted best-practice principles, we find that these actions may still fail to contribute to conservation objectives over the long term. We advocate for an alternative approach in which biodiversity offset and compensation projects are designed and implemented as part of a National Offset Strategy that (1) takes into account the cumulative impacts of development in individual countries, (2) identifies priority offset sites, (3) promotes aggregated offsets, and (4) integrates biodiversity offset and compensation projects with national biodiversity conservation objectives. We also propose supplementary principles necessary for biodiversity offsets to contribute to great ape conservation in Africa. Caution should still be exercised, however, with regard to offsets until further field-based evidence of their effectiveness is available

Chimpanzees in Guinea and in West Africa

The Western subspecies of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) is the second most endangered subspecies among the four recognized subspecies in Africa today. P. t. verus is patchily distributed and numbers between 21,300 and 55,600 individuals. P. t. verus is very rare or close to extinction in four West Africa countries, including Burkina Faso, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, and Senegal. It has already disappeared from the wild in Togo and the Gambia. The subspecies is also possibly now extinct in Benin. P. t. verus, therefore, survives mainly in Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Mali. Guinea is probably the country with the greatest number of chimpanzees in West Africa, with approximately 17,582 (8,113–29,011) chimpanzees nationwide. It is acknowledged today that the majority (more than 90%) of chimpanzees in Guinea are living outside protected areas. A large proportion of the chimpanzee population is believed to be living in the Fouta Djallon Region of Guinea, while it is estimated that a significant proportion also inhabits the forest region of Guinea. Hunting, poaching, the bush-meat and pet trade, and habitat loss variably threaten chimpanzee populations across different regions of Guinea. As human encroachment into chimpanzee habitat intensifies, the risk of disease transmission is also of increasing concern. This chapter aims to summarize the current status of P. t. verus across West Africa, as well as in Guinea, with a special focus on current and future threats

Sites in Africa where private sector or development projects are seeking to use offsets and compensation projects to counterbalance residual negative impacts to great apes and their habitat.

<p>Sites include (1) the Simandou Project in the Republic of Guinea, (2) the Global Alumina Project (GAP) in the Republic of Guinea, (3) the Bumbuna Hydroelectric Project (BHP) in Sierra Leone, and (4) the Lom Pangar Dam in the Republic of Cameroon.</p

Summary of predicted project impacts on great apes and proposed mitigation measures.

<p>Summary of predicted project impacts on great apes and proposed mitigation measures.</p