Interactions between environmental change and exploitation on Borneo's mammalian megafauna

由于日益加剧的环境和人为压力，东南亚目前正在经历物种灭绝危机。具体地说，由于栖息地丧失、气候变化、不可持续的狩猎和非法偷猎，大型哺乳动物面临多重威胁。例如，由于前所未有的森林砍伐速度，马来亚太阳熊(Helarctos Malanayus)正在其范围内失去栖息地，但它也面临着狩猎身体部位和作为农业害虫受到迫害的威胁。这些压力导致世界上一些生物多样性最强的地区出现违约或“空林综合症”。为了解决这一紧迫问题，Katie的研究将致力于确定环境变化和迫害对野生动物种群的相对影响，主要针对印度尼西亚婆罗洲(加里曼丹)的旗舰物种，如太阳熊和猩猩。她将采取跨学科的方法，将自然科学和社会科学结合起来，了解加里曼丹的哪些物种和哪些地区面临最大的风险。Katie将把现有的来自加里曼丹干扰梯度上八个森林地点的相机陷阱数据集与两个新的相机陷阱调查结合起来，以确定环境对大型哺乳动物栖息地的影响。2020年，她将对现有地点之一进行重新采样，以调查时间变化，并于2021年在以前未采样的地区实施新的相机调查。此外，将使用创新的方法设计一份问卷，询问敏感问题，以调查该地区狩猎和哺乳动物剥削的盛行情况。最终，该研究项目将结合生态和社会数据集，确定环境变化和迫害对受威胁的大型哺乳动物的综合和相对影响，帮助为该地区更广泛的保护战略提供信息，并针对违约的高风险地区。

South East Asia is currently undergoing an extinction crisis due to intensifying environmental and anthropogenic pressures. Specifically, large mammals face multiple threats due to habitat loss, climate change, unsustainable hunting and illegal poaching. For example, the Malayan sun bear (Helarctos malanayus) is losing habitat across its range due to unprecedented rates of deforestation, but it is also at threat from hunting for body parts and persecution as agricultural pests. These pressures result in defaunation or 'empty-forest syndrome' in some of the world's most biodiverse regions. To address this urgent issue, Katie's research will aim to determine the relative influence of environmental change and persecution on wildlife populations, predominately targeting flagship species such as the sun-bear and orang-utan in Indonesian Borneo (Kalimantan). She will take an interdisciplinary approach by combining the natural and social sciences to understand which species and which regions of Kalimantan are most at risk. Katie will combine an existing camera-trap dataset from eight forest sites across a disturbance gradient in Kalimantan with two new camera-trap surveys to determine environmental influences on large mammal occupancy. In 2020, she will re-sample one of the existing sites to investigate temporal change and, in 2021, implement a new camera survey in a previously unsampled region. Additionally, a questionnaire will be designed using innovative methods for asking sensitive questions, to investigate the prevalence of hunting and mammal exploitation in the area. Ultimately, this research project will combine ecological and social datasets to determine the combined and relative impacts of environmental change and persecution on threatened mammalian megafauna, helping inform wider conservation strategies in the region and target high-risk areas of defaunation.