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Description du sujet. La faune mammalienne de la Réserve de Biosphère de Luki en République démocratique du Congo est soumise à de fortes pressions anthropiques menaçant son intégrité. Objectifs. Cette étude vise à caractériser la diversité et l'état de conservation de la communauté animale mammalienne de la réserve, non documentés à ce jour. Méthode. Pour y parvenir, une grille de 40 pièges photographiques a été déployée au coeur de la réserve durant 90 jours sur une surface de 32 km2. En parallèle, un suivi journalier de l'activité de chasse de 50 chasseurs, issus de cinq villages situés en périphérie de la réserve, a été entrepris durant 63 jours. Résultats. Les relevés des pièges photographiques ont permis de répertorier 14 taxons de mammifères, identifiés au moins au niveau du genre, parmi lesquels le chimpanzé (Pan troglotydes), espèce menacée d'extinction. Quant aux tableaux de chasse, 18 espèces ont été capturées sur la période suivie. Parmi les principaux groupes d'animaux recensés selon les deux approches, les rongeurs viennent en tête avec respectivement 86,4 % des détections par pièges photographiques et 66,9 % des prises par les chasseurs. Les espèces de taille moyenne, comme les céphalophes, sont peu détectées et peu capturées. Comparée à d'autres aires protégées d'Afrique centrale étudiées avec des dispositifs et des taux d'échantillonnages comparables, la réserve de Biosphère de Luki apparait bien pauvre en termes de diversité des espèces de mammifères. Conclusions. Ces résultats semblent indiquer une forte altération de la communauté mammalienne résidant dans la Réserve de Biosphère de Luki, malgré la présence d'une petite population relictuelle de chimpanzés. L'absence d'espèces de taille moyenne à grande dans les tableaux de chasse et leur très faible détection par pièges photographiques montrent l'urgence d'accroître l'effort de surveillance et questionnent la politique de gestion participative de la réserve mise en place depuis près de 20 années

La problématique des droits des populations locales et autochtones est plus que jamais au coeur de l'agenda international de la gestion des ressources forestières (Sikor et Stahl 2011). En effet, ces groupes de population réclament un ensemble de droits inhérents aux tenures foncières et forestières, aux cultures locales et à la parole sur la gestion des ressources naturelles adjacentes à leurs biotopes. Face à ces demandes et pressions sociales venues autant de la base que des ONG qui prétendent les représenter, la communauté internationale et plusieurs États ont mis en place divers mécanismes juridiques qui reconnaissent et promeuvent à la fois les droits et devoirs de ces catégories sociales vulnérables sur le plan de la biodiversité. L'une des réponses aux demandes des acteurs riverains relatives à la justice environnementale est, sans doute, l'approche de conservation des ressources naturelles axée sur la promotion et le respect de leurs droits (Campese et al. 2009).

While the scientific community documents environmental degradation and develops scenarios to identify the operational margins of system Earth, less attention is given to how decisions are made that steer the system in one direction or the other. We propose to use strategy games for this purpose, increasing the representation of human agency in scenario development and creating spaces for deliberation between different worldviews. Played by the right people, strategy games could help break free from established norms and support more transparent democratic dialogues, responding to the human and social limitations of current decision-making. The question is, who gets to play?

Movement patterns may reflect individual age-specific variation. For example, individuals that sample novel areas (e.g. natal dispersal) may show different movements from those of adults settling in more stable areas and moving around local environments to procure food and shelter. The long-term study of a solitary large carnivore, the brown bear, Ursus arctos, allowed us to test for age-related differences in movement behaviour and, more specifically, for potential inter- versus intraindividual variation among adult versus subadult bears. In addition to age, we also explored factors other than individual characteristics that have the potential to determine movement patterns: sex, season (mating versus hyperphagia) and body weight. The contribution of age to movement patterns seemed to be irrelevant, most of the observed movement patterns being primarily explained by season and body weight. Moreover, intraindividual movements within a home range were more marked among subadult brown bears. We hypothesize that two mechanisms may lead to subadults and adults moving similarly. First, both must hibernate and, consequently, need to store energy during hyperphagia. Second, although triggered by different factors, both make erratic/long movements after hibernation, for dispersal (subadults) or mating (adults), which might contribute to shaping similar movement patterns. Different motivations could thus be expressed through the same behavioural patterns, and equifinality (i.e. similar ecological patterns emerge from different initial conditions) might be considered an intrinsic property of animal behaviours.

While the scientific community documents environmental degradation and develops scenarios to identify the operational margins of system Earth, less attention is given to how decisions are made that steer the system in one direction or the other. We propose to use strategy games for this purpose, increasing the representation of human agency in scenario development and creating spaces for deliberation between different worldviews. Played by the right people, strategy games could help break free from established norms and support more transparent democratic dialogues, responding to the human and social limitations of current decision-making. The question is, who gets to play?

Forests across the world stand at a crossroads where climate and land-use changes are shaping their future. Despite demonstrations of political will and global efforts, forest loss, fragmentation, and degradation continue unabated. No clear evidence exists to suggest that these initiatives are working. A key reason for this apparent ineffectiveness could lie in the failure to recognize the agency of all stakeholders involved. Landscapes do not happen. We shape them. Forest transitions are social and behavioral before they are ecological. Decision makers need to integrate better representations of people?s agency in their mental models. A possible pathway to overcome this barrier involves eliciting mental models behind policy decisions to allow better representation of human agency, changing perspectives to better understand divergent points of view, and refining strategies through explicit theories of change. Games can help decision makers in all of these tasks.

The duiker community in Central African rainforests includes a diversity of species that can coexist in the same area. The study of their activity patterns is needed to better understand habitat use or association between the species. Using camera traps, we studied the temporal activity patterns, and quantified for the first time the temporal overlap and spatial co-occurrence between species. Our results show that: (i) Two species are strongly diurnal: Cephalophus leucogaster, and Philantomba congica, (ii) two species are mostly diurnal: C.callipygus and C. nigrifrons, (iii) one species is strongly nocturnal: C.castaneus, (iv) and one species is mostly nocturnal: C.silvicultor. Analyses of temporal activities (for five species) identified four species pairs that highly overlapped (Δ^≥ 0.80), and six pairs that weakly overlapped (Δ^ between 0.06 and 0.35). Finally, co-occurrence tests reveal a truly random co-occurrence (plt > 0.05 and pgt > 0.05) for six species pairs, and a positive co-occurrence (pgt < 0.05) for four pairs. Positive co-occurrences are particularly noted for pairs formed by C.callipygus with the other species (except C. nigrifrons). These results are essential for a better understanding of the coexistence of duikers and the ecology of poorly known species (C. leucogaster and C. nigrifrons), and provide clarification on the activity patterns of C. silvicultor which was subject to controversy. Camera traps proved then to be a powerful tool for studying the activity patterns of free-ranging duiker populations.

Camera traps (CTs) have been increasingly used for wildlife monitoring worldwide. In the tropics, most CT inventories target wildlife-friendly sites, and CTs are commonly placed towards wildlife trails. However, it has been argued that this placement strategy potentially provides biased results in comparison to more systematic or randomized approaches. Here, we investigated the impact of CT placement on the remotely sensed mammal diversity in a tropical forest in Gabon by comparing pairs of systematically placed and wildlife-trail-oriented CTs. Our survey protocol consisted of 15–17 sampling points arranged on a 2 km2 grid and left for one month in the field. This protocol was replicated sequentially in four areas. Each sampling point comprised a CT pair: the 'systematic CT', installed at the theoretical point and systematically oriented towards the most uncluttered view; and the 'trail CT', placed within a 20-m radius and facing a wildlife trail. For the vast majority of species, the detection probabilities were comparable between placements. Species average capture rates were slightly higher for trail-based CTs, though this trend was not significant for any species. Therefore, the species richness and composition of the overall community, such as the spatial distribution patterns (from evenly spread to site-restricted) of individual species, were similarly depicted by both placements. Opting for a systematic orientation ensures that pathways used preferentially by some species—and avoided by others—will be sampled proportionally to their density in the forest undergrowth. However, trail-based placement is routinely used, already producing standardised data within large-scale monitoring programmes. Here, both placements provided a comparable picture of the mammal community, though it might not be necessarily true in depauperate areas. Both types of CT data can nevertheless be combined in multi-site analyses, since methods now allow accounting for differences in stu

Forests across the world stand at a crossroads where climate and land-use changes are shaping their future. Despite demonstrations of political will and global efforts, forest loss, fragmentation, and degradation continue unabated. No clear evidence exists to suggest that these initiatives are working. A key reason for this apparent ineffectiveness could lie in the failure to recognize the agency of all stakeholders involved. Landscapes do not happen. We shape them. Forest transitions are social and behavioral before they are ecological. Decision makers need to integrate better representations of people’s agency in their mental models. A possible pathway to overcome this barrier involves eliciting mental models behind policy decisions to allow better representation of human agency, changing perspectives to better understand divergent points of view, and refining strategies through explicit theories of change. Games can help decision makers in all of these tasks.