Mitigating Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Gorilla Conservation: Lessons From Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, Uganda

Building resilience in primate tourism: insights from the COVID-19 pandemic and future directions

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic revealed the vulnerability of the tourism industry, triggering a call for a structural shift. This study focuses on COVID-19 impacts on primate tourism sites using the resilience-based wildlife tourism study of Jones et al. (2023) as an interpretive framework. Using an online survey, we collected data on impacts, changes, and challenges experienced at primate tourism destinations in various parts of the world. Based on 33 responses, the study found that the most profound impacts were financial, compromising the ability to run facilities and facilitate tourism due mainly to limitation of access to sites for tourists and/or staff/researchers. Seventeen respondents reported that their sites did not make substantial changes in response to the pandemic. This warrants further study to elicit the reasons for the lack of response. It may indicate difficulties in adaptation or implementation due to limited resources or other factors amid COVID-19 pandemic. We suggest that the framework proposed by Jones et al. (2023) has limitations in effectively addressing rapid and extensive repercussions of a disruption such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Preventing zoonotic and zooanthroponotic disease transmission at wild great ape sites: Recommendations from qualitative research at Bwindi Impenetrable National Park

Employees at wild great ape sites are at high risk of transmitting infectious diseases to endangered great apes. Because of the significant amount of time employees spend near great apes, they are a priority population for the prevention and treatment of zoonotic and zooanthroponotic spillover and need adequate preventive and curative healthcare. Qualitative, semi-structured interviews with 46 staff (rangers and porters) at Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda (BINP) and key informants from five other wild great ape sites around the world were performed. The objectives of the study were to 1) evaluate health-seeking behavior and health resources used by staff in contact with great apes at Bwindi Impenetrable National Park; 2) evaluate existing occupational health programs for employees working with great apes in other parts of the world; and 3) make recommendations for improvement of occupational health at BINP. Results show that BINP employees do not frequently access preventive healthcare measures, nor do they have easy access to diagnostic testing for infectious diseases of spillover concern. Recommendations include assigning a dedicated healthcare provider for great ape site staff, providing free annual physical exams, and stocking rapid malaria tests and deworming medication in first aid kits at each site.

Broadening the focus of forest conservation beyond carbon

Two concurrent trends are contributing towards a much broader view of forest conservation. First, the appreciation of the role of forests as a nature-based climate solution has grown rapidly, particularly among governments and the private sector. Second, the spatiotemporal resolution of forest mapping and the ease of tracking forest changes have dramatically improved. As a result, who does and who pays for forest conservation is changing: sectors and people previously considered separate from forest conservation now play an important role and need to be held accountable and motivated or forced to conserve forests. This change requires, and has stimulated, a broader range of forest conservation solutions. The need to assess the outcomes of conservation interventions has motivated the development and application of sophisticated econometric analyses, enabled by high resolution satellite data. At the same time, the focus on climate, together with the nature of available data and evaluation methods, has worked against a more comprehensive view of forest conservation. Instead, it has encouraged a focus on trees as carbon stores, often leaving out other important goals of forest conservation, such as biodiversity and human wellbeing. Even though both are intrinsically connected to climate outcomes, these areas have not kept pace with the scale and diversification of forest conservation. Finding synergies between these 'co-benefits', which play out on a local scale, with the carbon objective, related to the global amount of forests, is a major challenge and area for future advances in forest conservation.

Disgust in animals and the application of disease avoidance to wildlife management and conservation

Disgust is an adaptive system hypothesized to have evolved to reduce the risk of becoming sick. It is associated with behavioural, cognitive and physiological responses tuned to allow animals to avoid and/or get rid of parasites, pathogens and toxins. Little is known about the mechanisms and outcomes of disease avoidance in wild animals. Furthermore, given the escalation of negative human-wildlife interactions, the translation of such knowledge into the design of evolutionarily relevant conservation and wildlife management strategies is becoming urgent. Contemporary methods in animal ecology and related fields, using direct (sensory cues) or indirect (remote sensing technologies and machine learning) means, provide a flexible toolbox for testing and applying disgust at individual and collective levels. In this review/perspective paper, we provide an empirical framework for testing the adaptive function of disgust and its associated disease avoidance behaviours across species, from the least to the most social, in different habitats. We predict various trade-offs to be at play depending on the social system and ecology of the species. We propose five contexts in which disgust-related avoidance behaviours could be applied, including endangered species rehabilitation, invasive species, crop-raiding, urban pests and animal tourism. We highlight some of the perspectives and current challenges of testing disgust in the wild. In particular, we recommend future studies to consider together disease, predation and competition risks. We discuss the ethics associated with disgust experiments in the above contexts. Finally, we promote the creation of a database gathering disease avoidance evidence in animals and its applications.

Human-Borne Pathogens: Are They Threatening Wild Great Ape Populations?

Simple Summary

Human-driven activities, including agriculture, forestry, and mining, are destroying the natural habitats of wild great ape (bonobo, chimpanzee, gorilla, and orangutan) populations in Africa and Southeast Asia. The reduction in and fragmentation of wild great ape environments lead to (i) a decrease in population numbers, (ii) the isolation of current populations, and (iii) increased exposure to humans and their livestock. Consequently, the spatial overlap between humans and wild great apes might facilitate the transmission of infectious agents between them. Historically, animal-to-human pathogen transmission has attracted most of the attention of researchers and public health authorities. Only in recent years has the human-to-animal transmission pathway acquired notoriety, mainly due to conservation concerns. In this review, we examine and appraise literature-based evidence reporting wild great ape infections with viral, bacterial, parasitic, and fungal pathogens of potential anthropic nature. We select and further discuss two viral (Human Metapneumovirus and Respiratory Syncytial Virus), one bacterial (diarrhoeagenic Escherichia coli), and two parasitic (Cryptosporidium spp. and Giardia duodenalis) pathogens causing infections in wild great ape populations for which a human origin is most likely. Gaps in knowledge and future research directions are also identified.

Abstract

Climate change and anthropic activities are the two main factors explaining wild great ape habitat reduction and population decline. The extent to which human-borne infectious diseases are contributing to this trend is still poorly understood. This is due to insufficient or fragmented knowledge on the abundance and distribution of current wild great ape populations, the difficulty obtaining optimal biological samples for diagnostic testing, and the scarcity of pathogen typing data of sufficient quality. This review summarises current information on the most clinically relevant pathogens of viral, bacterial, parasitic, and fungal nature for which transmission from humans to wild great apes is suspected. After appraising the robustness of available epidemiological and/or molecular typing evidence, we attempt to categorise each pathogen according to its likelihood of truly being of human origin. We further discuss those agents for which anthroponotic transmission is more likely. These include two viral (Human Metapneumovirus and Respiratory Syncytial Virus), one bacterial (diarrhoeagenic Escherichia coli), and two parasitic (Cryptosporidium spp. and Giardia duodenalis) pathogens. Finally, we identify the main drawbacks impairing research on anthroponotic pathogen transmission in wild great apes and propose research lines that may contribute to bridging current knowledge gaps.

The 10th anniversary of the scientific description of the black snub-nosed monkey (Rhinopithecus strykeri): It is time to initiate a set of new management strategies to save this critically endangered primate from extinction

Traditionally, the genus Rhinopithecus (Milne-Edwards, 1872, Primates, Colobinae) included four allopatric species, restricted in their distributions to China and Vietnam. In 2010, a fifth species, the black snub-nosed monkey (Rhinopithecus strykeri) was discovered in the Gaoligong Mountains located on the border between China and Myanmar. Despite the remoteness, complex mountainous terrain, dense fog, and armed conflict that characterizes this region, over this past decade Chinese and Myanmar scientists have begun to collect quantitative data on the ecology, behavior and conservation requirements of R. strykeri. In this article, we review the existing data and present new information on the life history, ecology, and population size of R. strykeri. We discuss these data in the context of past and current conservation challenges faced by R. strykeri, and propose a series of both short-term and long-term management actions to ensure the survival of this Critically Endangered primate species. Specifically, we recommend that the governments and stakeholders in China and Myanmar formulate a transboundary conservation agreement that includes a consensus on bilateral exchange mechanisms, scientific research and monitoring goals, local community development, cooperation to prevent the hunting of endangered species and cross-border forest fires. These actions will contribute to the long-term conservation and survival of this Critically Endangered species.