West Africa is undergoing rapid environmental change from food production, deforestation, climate change, urbanization. These perturbations negatively affect species abundance and diversity with broad implications for ecological processes. Mammals are essential for ecosystem function and provide ecosystem services, for example, via nutrient regulation and seed dispersal. Due to loss of species abundance, diversity, and extinction, many key species interactions and ecosystem functions are threatened. Unfortunately, investigations on diversity, abundance, and distribution for mammals in West Africa remain understudied. We aim to enhance our understanding of mammal diversity by integrating multiple data sources on spatial occurrence focusing on the largest protected area complex in West Africa (WAP). WAP is comprised of National Parks W, Arly, and Pendjari as well as hunting concessions, spanning over 26,000 km2 in Burkina Faso, Niger, and Benin. Specifically, we extract point occurrence data from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) to validate coarse geographic range maps from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). We then complement these efforts by conducting an extensive camera-survey from 2016-to present to further document terrestrial mammal species occurrence in the region.
Results/Conclusions
In WAP, there are a total of 150 mammal species, 16% of which are classified as “Near Threatened” or “Threatened” with extinction by the IUCN. Furthermore, 25.9% of the 27 Carnivore species are near threatened or threatened with extinction. By overlaying species range maps and confirmed sightings of species, represented by GBIF data and camera trap data, we were able to calculate discordance over the defined area. We found the average discordance among carnivores to be very high, 0.9342. This can be problematic for conservation. For example, for African Wild Dogs (Lycaon pictus), the IUCN range map intersects with 113 of the polygons, while the GBIF occurrence data only intersects with 1 polygon and there were no African Wild Dogs observed on camera. This means the IUCN range map may be exaggerating the range of an endangered species, making the status of the species seem more positive than it is. Conservation decisions within the WAP complex and around the world are often made based on IUCN range maps. As the number of species of conservation concern increases, it is essential to validate these range maps by incorporating data from many sources. Going forward, we will expand this to all mammals in the WAP complex.