Protected areas aim to conserve nature, ecosystem services, and cultural values; however, they have variable success in doing so under high development pressure. Southeast Asian protected areas faced ...the highest level of human pressure at the turn of the twenty-first century. To estimate their effectiveness in conserving forest cover and forest carbon stocks for 2000-2018, we used statistical matching methods to control for the non-random location of protected areas, to compare protection against a matched counterfactual. We found Southeast Asian protected areas had three times less forest cover loss than similar landscapes without protection. Protected areas that had completed management reporting using the Management Effectiveness Tracking Tool (METT) conserved significantly more forest cover and forest carbon stocks than those that had not. Management scores were positively associated with the level of carbon emissions avoided, but not the level of forest cover loss avoided. Our study is the first to find that METT scores could predict the level of carbon emissions avoided in protected areas. Given that only 11% of protected areas in Southeast Asia had completed METT surveys, our results illustrate the need to scale-up protected area management effectiveness reporting programs to improve their effectiveness for conserving forests, and for storing and sequestering carbon.
Abstract Terrestrial and marine protected areas have long been championed as an approach to biodiversity conservation. For protected areas to be effective, equitable and inclusive, the involvement of ...local residents in their management and governance is considered important. Globally, there are many approaches to involving local residents in protected area law enforcement. However, opportunities for comparing different approaches have been limited by the lack of a clear common framework for analysis. To support a more holistic understanding, we present a framework for analysing the contributions of local residents to protected area law enforcement. Informed by a review of the literature and discussions with conservation practitioners, the framework comprises five key dimensions: (1) the different points in the enforcement system at which local residents are involved, (2) the nature of local participation in decision-making, (3) the type of external support provided to local residents, (4) the different motivating forces for participation, and (5) the extent to which local participation is formalized. We apply the framework to three real-world case studies to demonstrate its use in analysing and comparing the characteristics of different approaches. We suggest this framework could be used to examine variation in local participation within the enforcement system, inform evaluation and frame constructive discussions between relevant stakeholders. With the global coverage of protected areas likely to increase, the framework provides a foundation for better understanding the contributions of local residents to protected area law enforcement.
Stag beetle fauna of Cambodia (Coleoptera: Lucanidae) Maquart, Pierre-Olivier; Yamamoto, Shûhei; Sopha, Sin ...
Journal of Asia-Pacific entomology,
March 2023, 2023-03-00, 2023-03, Letnik:
26, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
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•First checklist for the Lucanidae fauna of Cambodia.•A total of 29 species recorded in Cambodia.•4 species are reported for the first time.
To date, no species catalogue of stag ...beetles (Lucanidae) has been compiled for Cambodia. According to the available literature, we assembled the checklist based on the previously recorded and recognized Cambodian lucanid species in the country. In the present paper, we newly record four species from Cambodia: Falcicornis axisopsis (Séguy, 1954); Neolucanus similis Bomans & Ratti, 1976; Prosopocoilus suturalis (Olivier, 1789); and Prosopocoilus jenkinsi (Westwood, 1848). An updated checklist of the Cambodian stag beetles is given. The total number of the Cambodian lucanid species has now reached 29, but this species count is considerably less diverse than those in neighboring countries. Our study suggested that this poor diversity is not primarily due to biogeography or small country size but to a lack of research effort.
The international legal trade in wildlife can provide economic and other benefits, but when unsustainable can be a driver of population declines. This impact is magnified by the additional burden of ...illegal trade, yet how it covaries with legal trade remains little explored. We combined law‐enforcement time‐series of seizures of wildlife goods imported into the United States (US) and the European Union (EU) with data on reported legal trade to evaluate the evidence for any relationships. Our analysis examined 28 US and 20 EU products derived from CITES‐listed species with high volume and frequency of both reported trade and seizures. On average, seizures added 28% and 9% to US and EU reported legal trade levels respectively, and in several cases exceeded legal imports. We detected a significant but weak overall positive relationship between seizure volumes and reported trade into the US over time, but not into the EU. These results highlight the importance of maintaining long‐term records of border seizures and enforcement effort, and accounting for illegal trade where possible in non‐detriment findings. Our findings suggest a complex and nuanced temporal association between the illegal and legal wildlife trades.
We present evidence of scent marking in the large‐antlered muntjac (Muntiacus vuquangensis). Given the importance of scent marking in individual recognition among ungulates, this behavior may serve ...to communicate the fitness cost of antagonistic interactions among rival males and could serve as a mechanism for mate assessment among females.
We document the first recorded evidence of scent marking in the large‐antlered muntjac (Muntiacus vuquangensis), a little‐known and threatened deer endemic to the Annamites ecoregion of Indochina. We discuss the function of this behavior within a wider behavioral and evolutionary ecology framework for mammals living in tropical forests.
Article impact statement: Better understanding and interpretation of CITES trade data is required to avoid erroneous conclusions in publications about wildlife trade.
A wildlife camera-trapping survey spanning 5 years, from January 2014 to 2021 in Virachey National Park in Northeast Cambodia, turned up notable records of Asiatic black bears (Ursus thibetanus) and ...sun bears (Helarctos malayanus). Both species are in decline throughout Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) as a result of illegal logging, agricultural and infrastructure development that encroaches on forest habitat, and a widespread snaring crisis that supplies the illegal wildlife trade. We deployed 44 camera traps in 3 separate survey areas, resulting in 133 independent encounters of sun bears, 44 of black bears, and 2 Ursidae, where the species could not be determined. Despite the threats facing both species, our records show that the Park is an important refuge and further, more widespread and structured surveys are warranted to help identify priority areas for bear conservation.
The large-antlered muntjac Muntiacus vuquangensis , a Critically Endangered deer found only in the Annamites ecoregion (Vietnam, Laos, and northeastern Cambodia), has undergone severe population ...declines as a result of widespread snaring across its range. Little is known about the newly discovered large-antlered muntjac population in Cambodia, and this lack of knowledge hinders the development of targeted conservation strategies and the implementation of robust monitoring. From February 23 to July 27, 2021, we collected landscape-scale camera-trapping data on the Cambodian population in Virachey National Park. We recorded the species in 6 camera-trap stations in 2 of 7 areas surveyed. We analysed the camera-trap data with single-species Bayesian occupancy models to understand factors influencing occurrence and to produce a robust baseline for the species. Large-antlered muntjac occurrence had a positive relationship with elevation and a negative relationship with a least-cost-path measure of remoteness. Mean ± SD estimated occupancy was estimated to be 0.1 ± 0.17 across all stations, and 0.30 ± 0.29 and 0.25 ± 0.15 for the 2 grids where the species was detected. Our results provide new information on the distribution of large-antlered muntjac in Cambodia and can be used to target anti-poaching efforts and monitor population trends over time. Virachey National Park appears to be a stronghold for the species, and conservation actions are needed to ensure that its large-antlered muntjac population does not face the same fate as populations in other parts of the species range.
The USA is the largest consumer of legally, internationally-traded wildlife. A proportion of this trade consists of species listed in the Appendices of CITES, and recorded in the CITES Trade ...Database. Using this resource, we quantified wildlife entering the USA for 82 of the most frequently recorded wildlife products and a range of taxonomic groups during 1979–2014. We examined trends in legal trade and seizures of illegally traded items over time, and relationships between trade and four national measures of biodiversity. We found that: (1) there is an overall positive relationship between legal imports and seizures; (2) Asia was the main region exporting CITES-listed wildlife products to the USA; (3) bears, crocodilians and other mammals (i.e. other than Ursidae, Felidae, Cetacea, Proboscidea, Primates or Rhinocerotidae) increased in both reported legal trade and seizures over time; (4) legal trade in live specimens was reported to be primarily from captive-produced, artificially-propagated or ranched sources, whereas traded meat was primarily wild sourced; (5) both seizures and legally traded items of felids and elephants decreased over time; and (6) volumes of both legally traded and seized species were correlated with four attributes of exporting countries: species endemism, species richness, number of IUCN threatened species, and country size. The goal of our analysis was to inform CITES decision-making and species conservation efforts.
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