Could camera traps save wildlife worldwide?

Video from the Goualougo Triangle Ape Project at Congo-apes.org

From Mongabay.com
by JEREMY HANCE

It's safe to say that the humble camera trap has revolutionized wildlife conservation. This simple contraption—an automated digital camera that takes a flash photo whenever an animal triggers an infrared sensor—has allowed scientists to collect photographic evidence of rarely seen, and often globally endangered species, with little expense and relative ease—at least compared to tromping through tropical forests and swamps looking for endangered rhino scat . Now researchers with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) are taking the utility of the camera trap one step further: a study in Animal Conservation uses a novel methodology, entitled the Wildlife Picture Index (WPI), to analyze population trends of 26 species in Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. While the study found a bleak decline in species, it shows the potential of camera traps for moving conservation forward since it marks the first time researchers have used camera traps to analyze long-term population trends of multiple species.

"The Wildlife Picture Index is an effective tool in monitoring trends in wildlife diversity that previously could only be roughly estimated," the study’s lead author, Tim O’Brien of WCS, said in a press release. "This new methodology will help conservationists determine where to focus their efforts to help stem the tide of biodiversity loss over broad landscapes."

Gathering 8 years of over 5,000 camera trap photos from Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park, O'Brien and his colleagues analyzed population trends of 25 mammals and one ground bird. They found that biodiversity suffered a total decline of 36 percent in the protected area, a loss which actually outpaced deforestation in the area.

Species sought for the lucrative black market, such as tigers, rhinos, and elephants, fell faster than smaller ones like monkeys and deer, which are killed for food or as agricultural pests. Species that had no economic value showed little change in abundance.

The researchers argue that this method, the WPI, could aid the goals of the internationally-recognized Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which by nearly all accounts has not succeeded in its goal of stemming global biodiversity loss by this year. The WPI may help provide better baseline of data for biodiversity worldwide, especially in the tropics where such data is often lacking.

"The Wildlife Picture Index will allow conservationists to accurately measure biodiversity in areas that previously have been either too expensive, or logistically prohibitive. We believe that this new methodology will be able to fill critical gaps in knowledge of wildlife diversity while providing much-needed baseline data to assess success or failure in places where we work," John Robinson, WCS Executive Vice President for Conservation and Science, says.

Another positive aspect of camera trap photos is that they allow the public to peek at rarely seen animals in their natural habitats, hopefully instilling deeper interest in and concern for the world's embattled and shrinking wildlife.

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REFERENCE
O’Brien TG, Baillie JEM, Krueger L, Cuke M (2010) The Wildlife Picture Index: monitoring top trophic levels. Animal Conservation doi:10.1111/j.1469-1795.2010.00357.x.

Abstract
Although recent biodiversity loss has been compared with cataclysmic mass extinctions, we still possess few indicators that can assess the extent or location of biodiversity loss on a global scale. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has mandated development of indicators that can meet the needs of monitoring biodiversity by 2010. To date, many indicators rely on unwarranted assumptions, secondary data, expert opinion and retrospective time series. We present a new biodiversity indicator, the Wildlife Picture Index (WPI) that targets medium and large-sized terrestrial birds and mammals in forested and savannah ecosystems that. The WPI is a composite indicator based on the geometric mean of relative occupancy estimates derived from camera trap sampling at a landscape scale. It has been designed to meet the needs of a CBD indicator while avoiding many of the pitfalls that characterize some CBD indicators. We present an example using 8 years of camera trap data from Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park, Indonesia to show that the WPI is capable of detecting changes in the rate of loss of biodiversity, a key requirement of a CBD indicator. We conclude that the WPI should be effective at monitoring top trophic levels in forest and savannah ecosystems using primary data and can fill the gap in knowledge about trends in tropical biodiversity.