New research undertaken by\u00a0Dr Tatyana Humle, DICE alumnus Thomas Evans and James Wingard\u00a0has found that the habitats of West African (western) chimpanzees are threatened due to inadequate legislative protection from human development.<\/p>\n
Western chimpanzees have been classified as critically endangered since 2016, having declined by 80% in 24 years. Across the eight range countries of the western chimpanzee (C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Senegal, and Sierra Leone) the continuing trend of species decline is principally attributed to human activities including poaching, habitat loss and habitat fragmentation.<\/p>\n
While western chimpanzees are legally protected throughout their range, an estimated 83% of the population lives outside of protected areas. They are therefore at risk from human development, especially open-cast mining which can be highly destructive and has seen a surge in international investment.<\/p>\n
The research<\/a> published by\u00a0Biological Conservation<\/a> suggests that the national legislation in place to regulate the environmental impacts of proposed development requires reform, including improved incorporation of mitigation hierarchy principles.<\/p>\n For the study<\/a>, undertaken by\u00a0Dr Tatyana Humle<\/a>, Thomas Evans and James Wingard (Legal Atlas<\/a>), a total of 175 laws were reviewed across the eight range countries of western chimpanzees, as well as Costa Rica as a benchmark of best practice. Laws reviewed can be found in the Legal Atlas\u00ae platform under the topics Environmental Impact Assessments and Wildlife Trade.<\/p>\n The researchers\u2019 analytical framework assessed each country\u2019s legislation laws for avoiding impacts on chimpanzees, minimising and remediating impact on chimpanzees and the use of biodiversity offsets. Dr Humle said:<\/p>\n \u2018The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) procedures utilised by the countries examined do not go far enough to protect western chimpanzees. With global biodiversity loss occurring at an alarming rate, this is a major concern.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Thomas Evans said: \u2018Mitigation hierarchy principles are critical to species conservation and help to regulate the environmental impacts of projects that are not reliant upon development banks or other debt-financing markets. A tightening of legislation is necessary to ensure that avoidance, remediation and offset measures are implemented in line with the objective of safeguarding the habitat of this critically endangered species.\u2019<\/p>\n \u00a0Read the full paper\u00a0<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" New research undertaken by\u00a0Dr Tatyana Humle, DICE alumnus Thomas Evans and James Wingard\u00a0has found that the habitats of West African (western) chimpanzees are threatened due … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61662,"featured_media":6799,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6599],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6796"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6796"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6800,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6796\/revisions\/6800"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}