Posts in category: News & Updates

On June 5 the world celebrates World Environment Day. The theme for the 2017 World Environment Day is, Connecting People to Nature. On this day we are encouraged to take time away from our daily lives to appreciate and engage with our natural world.

‘World Environment Day is the ‘People’s Day’ for doing something positive for the environment. Its aim is to harness individual actions and transform them into a collective power that has a legacy of real and lasting impact on the planet. The beauty of the day is in this diversity. It’s when citizens across the world collectively act, care and show their love for the planet. World Environment day

Securing tenure in critical ecosystems

Natural reserves continue to provide critical functions to humanity. They provide a wonderful environment for us to interact, connect and experience the healing and other benefits that nature has to offer.

The Africa Biodiversity Collaborative Group (ABCG) Land and Resource Tenure Rights working group is piloting new approaches for securing tenure in critical ecosystems. These ecosystems are anchors for biodiversity that support livelihoods for growing local populations. Strengthening rights and securing tenure, especially over the community lands managed as common property, are central to the conservation of this biodiversity.

The Kabobo Natural Reserve is one of these critical ecosystem that the working group has been working on securing. On December 21, 2016, the reserve was gazetted as the first protected area of Tanganyika Province in Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) representing a great milestone for ABCG, the Tanganyika Provincial Government and other stakeholders who worked hard to enable this realization. This is also a major step towards more fair participation in conservation in Africa’s largest forested country.

ABCG is applying the lessons learnt in the gazettement process in other areas of DRC and in the other ecosystems that we are working in in order to secure tenure and enable the communities living around these areas continue to protect and reap the benefits that come from living in harmony with nature.

Photo: Indri indri, target species for ABCG’s land use activities, Photo Credit: Harison Randrianasolo, CI/Madagascar

Biodiversity in African savannas is increasingly threated from extensive habitat loss, grazing, resource extraction and agriculture. A team of researchers and educators from The University of Florida, The University of Swaziland and The Organization for Tropical Studies discussed how they are addressing these issues at an Africa Biodiversity Collaborative Group speaker series held on May 9, 2017 at the African Wildlife Foundation, Washington, DC.

The team has two primary goals: 1) conducting research to help prevent biodiversity loss, and 2) use the research as a platform for developing human capacity.

The team is currently working on two long-term research projects examining the influence of abundant megaherbivores and agricultural landscapes on faunal biodiversity. One major hypothesis for balancing agricultural production with biodiversity and ecosystem functioning is the habitat heterogeneity hypothesis. This hypothesis states that by promoting heterogeneity (i.e. variation and variability of habitats) of land uses in agro-landscapes, there will be net benefits to biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Through this research, they have found that although bird and ants responded positively to increased landscape heterogeneity other taxonomic groups did not, suggesting that the landscape heterogeneity cannot be broadly applied as a conservation strategy. Examining the influence of megaherbivores on biodiversity showed a clear linked megaherbivore induced changes in vegetation to changes biodiversity. At high densities megaherbivores (prominently elephants) led to broad scale declines in the richness, diversity and ecological functionality of multiple faunal communities. Alternatively, in absence of megaherbivores increased canopy cover also created conditions that led to broad scale decline of faunal taxonomic groups.

Through their research the team has trained 12 Swazi student leading to 7 master’s degrees, enrollment in 3 international PhD programs and 2 full time jobs in conservation. Additionally, they have trained 18 South African environmental monitors, who now use their newly acquired skills to understand environmental changes in economical and politically disadvantaged communities.

Click here to listen to the event’s webinar recording

Featured Speaker

Dr. Bob McCleery is an Associate Professor in the Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation at the University of Florida. After completing his undergraduate from Cornell University he spent 2 years in Swaziland with the United States Peace Crops. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences from Texas A&M University. As a professor Dr. McCleery’s research has focused on understanding how wildlife respond to anthropogenic driven changes and maintaining wildlife communities and populations that foster healthy ecosystems. As part of his research he has published over 75 peer-reviewed manuscripts and book chapters and supervised 13 Ph.D. and 17 M.S students. He is the founder and co-director of the Savanna Research Center in Swaziland and was recently recognized as the University of Florida’s International Educator of the year.

In the city of Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), 4,000 chimpanzees taken from their natural habitat died in the period 1996-2006. This is about 400 chimpanzees annually illegally taken from their natural habitat for reasons such as bush meat, international demand for international trade and local demand for pets. These saddening statistics were presented by Franck Chantereau, co-founded JACK (Jeunes Animaux Confiques au Katanga / Young Animals Confiscated in Katanga) Sanctuary in DRC and the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance (PASA) board member at an Africa Biodiversity Collaborative Group speaker series presentation on April 25, 2017 at Conservation Internation, Arlington, USA.

In the presentation, Franck shared his experiences of working in the JACK Sanctuary and how through interventions such as education, advocacy and law enforcement they have managed to end the trade of chimpanzee trade in DRC.

The JACK sanctuary is a member of PASA the largest association of wildlife centers in Africa that includes 22 organizations in 13 countries. PASA rescues, protects and defend primates under siege. Susan Lutter, Chair of PASA’s Board, and Gregg Tully, PASA’s Executive Director, highlighted the organization’s current programs to protect African primates and their habitat at the presentation.

Event Resources

Click below to watch the webinar from the event.

Featured Speakers

Franck Chantereau co-founded J.A.C.K. (Jeunes Animaux Confiques au Katanga / Young Animals Confiscated in Katanga) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He continues to manage J.A.C.K., which works to stop the illegal wildlife trade and cares for orphan chimpanzee who have been confiscated by law authorities.

Susan Lutter comes to conservation after twenty-five years of general management and business development experience in the US and Europe followed by more than a decade of expanding experience in non-profit operations. After serving the Executive Director of the Gorilla Foundation, she is now the Director of Act for Great Apes as well as the Chair of the Board of the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance.

Gregg Tully, the Executive Director of PASA, came to the organization from Thailand where he was the CEO of Soi Dog Foundation. Before that he earned a PhD in Evolutionary Biology with a focus on animal behavior, and managed the Kathmandu Animal Treatment Centre in Nepal.

On April 11, 2017 the Africa Biodiversity Collaborative Group (ABCG) hosted a speaker series at Conservation International in Nairobi where Alice Ruhweza Executive Director, Vital Signs, Africa Field Division, Conservation International presented on the Vital Signs program. In the presentation, Alice shared results of the Vital Signs program first phase of implementation and invited opportunities for collaboration for the second 5 years phase of the program.

The Vital Signs (VS) monitoring system collects and integrates data using standardized protocols and methods including household surveys, vegetation plot measurements, and remote sensing, and has been under implementation in four countries in sub-Saharan Africa (Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, and Kenya) since 2012. The data aims to communicate the importance of ecosystem services for small holder agriculture, and guide governments, policy makers and other key stakeholders in understanding the competing priorities at landscape level and the complex trade-offs between agriculture, ecosystems and human wellbeing.

Preliminary findings from the data collected show that:

1. Nature plays a key role in food security
2. In Uganda, forests can buffer against malnutrition where agricultural output is low
3. Low returns on investment in agriculture due to land degradation
4. Improved Seeds and Extension Services are critical for higher yields

Click here to view presentation slides for more project results

Partnership with ABCG

Earlier this year, ABCG, through its Emerging Issues small grant program awarded Vital Signs a grant to ‘Establish a Community of Practice to Share Best Practices and Enhance Learning from the Vital Signs Monitoring System and the Resilience Atlas in East Africa’. This project aims to establish a community of practice of African conservation and development professionals to share best practice and lessons from the Vital Signs Monitoring System and the Resilience Atlas as tools to improve spatial planning, decision making, and better understanding of the synergies and tradeoffs between development and conservation.