• Lopé National Park
• Ivindo National Park
• Various hunted areas south of Lopé NP
Camera traps were set up in seven different study areas, and produced about 300 images of leopard, representing 53 different individuals.
• First record of spotted hyena
Crocuta crocuta in Gabon since the local extinction of the
species in the 1940’s.
• First record of bongo Tragelaphus euryceros
south of the Ivindo River (the assumed southern limit for the
species).
• First record of aardvark Orycteropus afer in a
rainforest site in central Gabon.
• First images of rare forest carnivores such as African
golden cat Profelis aurata, black-footed mongoose
Bdeogale nigripes and melanistic honey badgers Mellivora
capensis.
“…… in areas where hunting
for bushmeat is intense in Central and West Africa, leopard numbers
appear to be rapidly declining.”
Name : Philipp Henschel Title : PI Forest Leopard Study Email : phenschel[AT SIGN]wcsgabon[DOT]org
Address :
Wildlife Conservation Society,
BP 7847,
Libreville,
Gabon.
For more information, see www.wcs.org/africa
Wildlife Conservation Society International
Conservation,
Africa Program,
2300 Southern Blvd.,
Bronx, NY 10460, USA
The Wildlife Conservation Society's International Conservation program saves wildlife and wild lands by understanding and resolving critical problems that threaten key species and large, wild ecosystems around the world.
• Site-based conservation
• Research
• Training and capacity-building
• New model development
• Informing policy
• Linking zoo-based and field-based conservation
Contributions to this project can be sent to the WCS Africa Program in NY (address above)
© Philipp Henschel
Forest leopards have never been systematically surveyed in African forests, in spite of their potentially vital ecological role as the sole large mammalian predator in these systems. Because leopards are rarely seen in this habitat, and are difficult to survey using the most common techniques for assessing relative abundances of forest mammals, baseline knowledge of leopard ecology and responses to human disturbance in African forests remain largely unknown. The current lack of knowledge on the true status of leopards in African forest ecosystems, and the more recent reports on local extinctions in heavily hunted areas, precipitated the initiation of a Forest Leopard Study by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in Gabon in 2000. The goal of the study is to accurately establish the status of leopards throughout the African rainforest belt for the first time.
Forest leopard populations are likely to be negatively affected by a variety of factors, including prey depletion, direct hunting, and habitat conversion. It is difficult, however, to determine particular causes of leopard decline in any given area. Recent studies on tigers in India have shown, however, that prey depletion can be the most important factor in reducing populations of large cats. Indeed, in areas where hunting for bushmeat is intense in Central and West Africa, leopard numbers appear to be rapidly declining. For example, although leopards once ranged throughout Nigeria, surveys in the southeastern part of the country conducted in 1997 revealed leopard sign in only 2 of 47 forest patches. Researchers report a similar situation in the rainforests of southern Cameroon where leopards have disappeared from a number of protected areas within the past 10 years.
© Philipp Henschel
We currently estimate leopard population densities in several protected and hunted areas, using mark-recapture models applied to camera-trap data. At the same time we estimate the relative abundance of principal prey species using photographic rate indices - the number of camera days required to obtain a photograph of the species, summed against all cameras in the study. Finally, we study leopard prey composition in all sites through scat analysis.
Comparisons of the results from the protected versus the hunted areas will allow us to document how the off-take of bushmeat from an area affects leopard population densities and the relative abundance of principal prey species, and how leopards cope with the competition for prey with human hunters.
Our principal hypotheses are: 1) that leopards switch to smaller prey species where medium-sized prey are scarce due to human off-take (functional response); and, 2) leopard population density decreases with increasing levels of hunting for bushmeat, as a result of a decrease in the abundance of prey (numerical response).
Our results will significantly advance our ability to extrapolate densities of leopards across larger areas, as a function of bushmeat consumption, proximity of the area to human settlement, human population density, or other parameters. Ultimately the overall status of leopards in Gabon will be assessed by combining information on vegetation types, degree of human-induced disturbance, and known levels of bushmeat off-take throughout the country, the latter having been evaluated during the last three years in comprehensive market and household surveys on bushmeat consumption. Using our data on population density from different areas with varying hunting levels and forest types, a resulting population density will be assigned to 20 km2 cells, with the aim of deriving estimates of leopard numbers for the whole country.