Trends and biases in African large carnivore population assessments: identifying priorities and opportunities from a systematic review of two decades of research

Abstract

African large carnivores have undergone significant range and population declines over recent decades. Although conservation planning and the management of threatened species requires accurate assessments of population status and monitoring of trends, there is evidence that biodiversity monitoring may not be evenly distributed or occurring where most needed. Here, we provide the first systematic review of African large carnivore population assessments published over the last two decades (2000–2020), to investigate trends in research effort and identify knowledge gaps. We used generalised linear models (GLMs) and generalised linear mixed models (GLMMs) to identify taxonomic and geographical biases, and investigated biases associated with land use type and author nationality. Research effort was significantly biased towards lion (Panthera leo) and against striped hyaena (Hyaena hyaena), despite the latter being the species with the widest continental range. African wild dog (Lycaon pictus) also exhibited a negative bias in research attention, although this was partly explained by its relatively restricted distribution. The number of country assessments for a species was significantly positively associated with its geographic range in that country. Population assessments were biased towards southern and eastern Africa, particularly South Africa and Kenya. Northern, western, and central Africa were generally under-represented. Most studies were carried out in photographic tourism protected areas under government management, while non-protected and trophy hunting areas received less attention. Outside South Africa, almost half of studies (41%) did not include authors from the study country, suggesting that significant opportunities exist for capacity building in range states. Overall, large parts of Africa remain under-represented in the literature, and opportunities exist for further research on most species and in most countries. We develop recommendations for actions aimed at overcoming the identified biases and provide researchers, practitioners, and policymakers with priorities to help inform future research and monitoring agendas.

Mismatch between conservation needs and actual representation of lions from West and Central Africa in in situ and ex situ conservation

“…Within Africa, the South African and Tanzanian predominance in research and conservation was demonstrated by Di Marco et al (2017) and further highlighted in Bauer et al (2021). This was then confirmed for lion research in particular (Braczkowski et al, 2020;Sargent et al, 2021;Sobratee & Slotow, 2019), and for other large carnivores (Balme et al, 2014;Strampelli et al, 2022). Our study confirms that this extends to all research topics.…”

“…(2021). This was then confirmed for lion research in particular (Braczkowski et al., 2020; Sargent et al., 2021; Sobratee & Slotow, 2019), and for other large carnivores (Balme et al., 2014; Strampelli et al., 2022). Our study confirms that this extends to all research topics.…”

“…Although threatened and representing a distinct subspecies, the West and Central African lion has suffered from a lack of research and conservation attention (Bauer et al., 2003). Originating from multiple reasons, geographical biases have been reported in research efforts (Hickisch et al., 2019) and large carnivore monitoring (Strampelli et al., 2022). However, regional disparities in all lion field research topics have not been assessed.…”

Spotted hyaena population density across habitat and land use types in southern Tanzania

“…Although spotted hyaena coat patterns lend themselves to individual identification for use in SECR models, only 11 published studies have generated SECR density estimates for the species (Braczkowski, Gopalaswamy, et al, 2022;Davis et al, 2022;Faure et al, 2022;Tarugara & Clegg, 2022), and only three of these are from East Africa. This is considerably less than for other individually marked large carnivore species in the continent (Strampelli, Campbell, et al, 2022). Furthermore, although most of Tanzania falls within spotted hyaena range (Bohm & H€ oner, 2015), there are no published spatially explicit spotted hyaena population estimates from the country.…”

“…As a result of this increased conservation concern, there have been calls for more research that can help identify threats and guide conservation management of the species (Davis et al., 2022). In particular, although estimates of population status are crucial for effective wildlife management by allowing the identification of threats, evaluation of conservation interventions and development of conservation priorities (Campbell et al., 2002; Hayward et al., 2015), relatively few spotted hyaena populations have been assessed across the continent (Davis et al., 2022; Strampelli, Campbell, et al., 2022). Population density estimates derived from spatially explicit capture‐recapture (SECR) analyses are particularly rare.…”