Roads, development and wildlife in Central Africa: Purposeful planning for people, primates and pachyderms

Citation

Maisels F (2013) Roads, development and wildlife in Central Africa: Purposeful planning for people, primates and pachyderms. International Congress for Conservation Biology- Connecting Systems, Disciplines and Stakeholders, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, 21.07.2013-25.07.2013. http://www.conbio.org/mini-sites/iccb-2013/program-and-special-events/iccb-program

Abstract
Habitat loss and degradation, over-exploitation of resources, invasive species, pollution, disease, and climate change are conservation priorities. Road proliferation facilitates all of these, yet how many conservation organisations have a Roads Coordinator? In tropical forests road impacts can be catastrophic. In central Africa, large mammals are hunted out along new roads with areas closest to roads being the hardest hit. Megavertebrates such as forest elephants are impacted by roads even in the most remote forests. Elephant abundance declines dramatically near to roads, and home range size increases with roadless wilderness size because elephants are afraid to cross roads. Each new road built into the forest will bring not just industrial exploitation, but also settlement and access to illegal harvest of wildlife and commercial markets, yet conservationists have little impact on road development and management. Most roads are built with the goal of evacuating natural resources to markets as cheaply as possible, but the cheapest route is often the most ecologically destructive and least socially beneficial. Development agencies see roads as the skeleton on which to build economic growth, and aggressively promote road expansion, yet seldom consider the negative ecological and social impacts. Conservationists must make a last ditch effort to develop and force implementation of a “least bad” regional roads blueprint if functional forests and their megafauna are to survive.