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Divergent trends of large carnivore populations within the Bénoué Complex, North Cameroon, shown by long-term fine-scale monitoring

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Abstract

Large carnivore populations have suffered declines worldwide. For the African continent, these have been particularly strong in West and Central Africa. The Bénoué Complex in North Cameroon, located in Central Africa, is a key landscape for their conservation. We determined spatiotemporal trends in lion (Panthera leo), leopard (Panthera pardus) and spotted hyaena (Crocuta crocuta) abundance, using repeated spoor counts on transects from 2007 to 2015. Results of the temporal analysis indicate that lion and spotted hyaena abundance reduced over time across the complex, whereas leopards only declined in the last 2 years and primarily in the Faro Block. From the spatial analysis, it became clear spoor abundances differ between areas within the Bénoué Complex and between management types: Spoor densities were especially higher in Bouba Ndjida National Park and the hunting zones around Faro. This effect is most probably related to a more effective management strategy in these areas. Our fine-scale long-term monitoring technique provides a low-cost, easy to implement, multi-scale and effective tool for the identification of both regional and range-wide carnivore conservation hotspots.

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Acknowledgements

We thank F. Tarla, B.Kadiri, M. Babalé, N. Nhiomog, P. Bour, M. Saleh and the lion guards Daïrou, Hayatou, Souaibou, Bobo, Aoudou, Issa and Hamidou. We also thank MINFOF and the Garoua Wildlife College for the permits and support, and the park wardens of Bouba Ndjida, Faro and Bénoué NP for their trust and cooperation and commitment.

Funding

This research was financially supported by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, World Wildlife Fund and Prins Bernhard Natuur Fonds.

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Correspondence to C. E. Bakker.

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The collection of the material and analyses presented here were conducted in line with the regulations in Cameroon and at the respective authors’ institutions and do not require additional ethical clearance.

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Bakker, C.E., Kirsten, I.E., Bauer, H. et al. Divergent trends of large carnivore populations within the Bénoué Complex, North Cameroon, shown by long-term fine-scale monitoring. Eur J Wildl Res 66, 82 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10344-020-01420-y

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