INTRO: A comparison and quantification of mammal and poaching signs in two types of protected forests in Ghana. Surveys were conducted using camera trap sampling.
MERITS: The author's identified large differences in species richness that occur under different wildlife management techniques, demonstrating the importance of anti-poaching patrols for wildlife conservation. It's good to see a direct quantification of anti-poaching work, as the outputs of conservation schemes such as these are often taken for granted as beneficial without any supporting data.
CRITIQUE: No weaknesses. Although, it would be interesting to know the comparability of the nine locations e.g. were there any confounding variables between sites e.g. size, connectivity, road/population distance/density and if so were these considered.
DISCUSSION: The research shows the importance of funding, maintaining and enforcing active protection measures in wildlife reserves. It would be interesting to know the degree to which the rarity of certain species is attributable to poaching, habitat degradation and avoidance of humans. E.g. if anti-poaching patrols also occurred in the forest reserves, which if any, species would benefit.
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INTRO: The authors conducted surveys and camera trap sampling to assess mammal populations and human impacts in nine protected rain forests in Ghana, in both Wildlife Protected Areas and Forest Reserves including both logged and unlogged forests.
MERITS: The study shows the importance of protection to maximize biodiversity outcome
CRITIQUE: Might have also looked at logged areas under e.g. community governance to check for differences. I'd shorten the Introduction and use consistently Wildlife Protected Areas (WPAs) and Forest Reserves (FRs) when discussing teh differences.
DISCUSSION: Interesting case study on effectiveness of protected areas
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INTRO: This abstract concerns the impact of law enforcement on mammalian fauna in Ghana, west Africa, comparing mammal abundance in areas with and without law enforcement, and with and without logging. Much effort and funding is invested in law enforcement efforts, so it is important to understand (a) the scale of the problem of poaching when enforcement is absent, as well as (b) the effectiveness of patrols.
MERITS: The study employs two distinct datasets - surveys of signs of illegal activity, and surveys of mammalian fauna, via camera-traps. It is a distinct advantage to be able to consider the two processes simultaneously.
CRITIQUE: This is only an abstract, so it is very difficult to judge whether the methods are appropriate. However, there are some obvious questions to ask:
1. More mammals were seen in "Wildlife Protected Areas with...patrols" than forest reserves. This doesn't seem immediately informative. WPAs are presumably selected because they have more mammals in the first place, to some extent. This sentence also suggest that there are two differences between the areas being compared (WPA vs FR, and active patrols vs no patrols - though it isn't clear whether all WPAs have active patrols, or whether the comparison only included WPAs with active patrols). So which factor (protection status or patrol activity) drives the observed patterns? And would the difference in abundance/diversity be seen anyway, even without the protection status and without the patrols?
2. Mammal species richness was higher in logged than unlogged forest. (This result is perhaps not very surprising!) The authors suggest that the difference in mammal abundance was due to poaching, whereas presumably it's perfectly feasible that habitat loss and disturbance are just as important. Need to clarify (and justify).
3. I don't understand this sentence: "...we detected thirteen more signs of poaching than of mammals in Forest Reserves..." What ratio should we expect? This doesn't seem like a relevant metric, especially if it isn't compared with the same metric in other areas. (And is this really "thirteen more", and not "thirteen times more"?)
DISCUSSION: The issues mentioned above may be resolved in the full paper - it would not be appropriate to judge the study purely on the basis of the abstract. However, there may be potential issues! I would welcome a little more clarity!
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INTRO: Understanding the ability of law enforcement to prevent crime and protect wildlife in Protected Area's is critical, especially for managers who require information in order to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of patrols. The manuscript contributes to understanding on a relevant and important topic.
MERITS: Very clearly written.
CRITIQUE: The introductory section could be condensed to provide a more concise outline of the problem. This would provide more opportunity further on to increase the detail around the sampling strategy, analysis and results. Additional information should include:
· The size of the reserves assessed (this important in order to understand the scale of the survey effort), and whether survey effort was equal in all sites, or proportional.
· The statistical analysis conducted to estimate species richness and abundance in each site.
Whether these analyses accounted for imperfect detection, and the associated biases with these different data types (i.e. detecton, observational, recording biases).
· You state "By contrast, we detected thirteen more signs of poaching than of mammals in Forest Reserves". Define a poaching sign (snare, bullet, gun shot, footprint, hunting camp?). The manuscript should also provide more detail on the proportion of signs found in FR vs WPAs. A % is more useful, rather than "13 more". Was this difference statistically significant?
I have concerns about the time scale of the data - one years' data is not enough to draw credible inferences about the effectiveness of conservation or wildlife population trends. This is especially true when looking at something such as poaching, which varies considerably seasonally and annually.
DISCUSSION: At the beginning the authors adopt a rhetoric that suggests mammal hunting is specifically an African problem, perhaps modifying this would broaden the appeal of the talk by emphasizing the global nature of the challenge. You could then just tailor down to an African specific case study.
I feel there is a lack of clarity over the resarch question being addressed. The title refers specifically to anti-poaching patrols, whereas the manuscript refers to Protected Area effectiveness and conservation effectiveness. I would argue that these are three different things - exactly what is being assessed could be made clearer.
If the aim of the study is to provide evidence of the effectiveness of anti-poaching patrols (as the title suggests), I would expect some comparison between law enforcement effort in each site (for example, number of rangers, number of patrols, patrol effort, patrol area coverage etc), alongside the data already noted.
