Ebo’s future is uncertain, with two commercial logging concessions announced by Cameroon in 2020 and later suspended in response to national and international pressure. We conclude that the Ebo intact forest landscape retains an important mammal community, despite no formal legal protection. Some other species, however, including red colobus Piliocolobus preussi, leopard Panthera pardus, African golden cat Caracal aurata, and forest buffalo Syncerus caffer nanus are either close to extirpation or have been extirpated within living memory.
Distribution models for chimpanzees and elephants showed that their populations are concentrated in the centre of the forest, away from human pressure. Indeed, our recent camera trap data confirmed breeding Gorilla gorilla (western gorilla) and elephant. Recce monitoring of seven taxa (blue duiker Philantomba monticola, chimpanzee Pan troglodytes, forest elephant Loxodonta cyclotis, putty-nosed monkey Cercopithecus nictitans, medium sized duikers Cephalophus spp., and red river hog Potamochoerus porcus) showed that some are stable or increasing. We evaluated the status, trends, and distribution of mammals ≥ 0.5 kg in the Ebo forest over 12 years using guided recce and camera trap monitoring surveys, as well as local knowledge to inform future land use and conservation planning. Ebo forest (~1400 km2) in Cameroon is one of the largest remaining IFLs in the Cross-Sanaga-Bioko coastal forest ecoregion and harbours several IUCN Red-Listed threatened mammal species. Intact forest landscapes (IFLs) are globally important for maintaining functional ecosystems. A deliberate and consistent conservation effort will also be needed to maintain the effectiveness of the existing PAs. However, it is suggested that enhancing PAs connectivity in the northern part of the country may yield a high return on conservation investment. In the future, the conservation values of the PAs are expected to remain relatively unchanged. Currently, nearly 60% of high priority areas fall within the PAs.
The Zonation software was employed to evaluate the effectiveness of protected areas (PAs) in Thailand under future warming climate and identify high priority areas. Predictions based on SDMs suggest that relying on a single data source may skew the species’ realistic threatened status and misguide conservation planning. Limited availability of species occurrence data in many parts of the world leads to an increased use of species range maps in research on species responses to changing environments. However, species niche shifts likely result from anthropogenic factors. There is also evidence of niche conservatism and niche shift among the taxa. The species will have to move 33 – 105 times faster than they once did in the past in order to search out suitable habitat. It is found that large mammals are particularly vulnerable to climate change. The effects of climate changes on large mammal distributions were examined across three time intervals: past (the last interglacial ~120,000 – 140,000 years before present), present (AD 1945 - present) and future (2050) while rates of species range shifts between the time intervals were also determined. In this thesis, Species Distribution Modelling (SDM) techniques were used to predict potential species distributions in relation to 6 climatic variables. Hence, it is important to identify the key impact of environmental changes in order to develop more appropriate and effective conservation plans to mitigate species extinction risks.
Southeast Asia, one of the world’s richest biodiversity hotspots, is predicted to lose most of its species by 2100. It is suggested climate change contributes considerably to global biodiversity loss.