Large carnivore populations have suffered declines worldwide. For the African continent, these have been particularly strong in West and Central Africa. The Bénoué Complex in North Cameroon, located in Central Africa, is a key landscape for their conservation. We determined spatiotemporal trends in lion (Panthera leo), leopard (Panthera pardus) and spotted hyaena (Crocuta crocuta) abundance, using repeated spoor counts on transects from 2007 to 2015. Results of the temporal analysis indicate that lion and spotted hyaena abundance reduced over time across the complex, whereas leopards only declined in the last 2 years and primarily in the Faro Block. From the spatial analysis, it became clear spoor abundances differ between areas within the Bénoué Complex and between management types: Spoor densities were especially higher in Bouba Ndjida National Park and the hunting zones around Faro. This effect is most probably related to a more effective management strategy in these areas. Our fine-scale long-term monitoring technique provides a low-cost, easy to implement, multi-scale and effective tool for the identification of both regional and range-wide carnivore conservation hotspots.

中文翻译：

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长期精细监测显示，喀麦隆北贝努瓦地区大型食肉动物种群呈不同趋势

大型食肉动物的数量在世界范围内呈下降趋势。对于非洲大陆，这些在西非和中非尤为突出。位于中部非洲北部喀麦隆的贝努瓦（Bénoué）建筑群是其保护的重要景观。我们确定了狮子（Panthera leo），豹（Panthera pardus）和斑点鬣狗（Crocuta crocuta）的时空趋势）的丰度，使用从2007年到2015年的反复样点计数来计数。时间分析的结果表明，狮子和斑鬣狗的丰度在整个建筑群中随着时间的流逝而减少，而豹只在最近2年才下降，主要是在Faro街区。通过空间分析，可以清楚地看出，贝努瓦建筑群内各地区之间以及管理类型之间的贫瘠程度都存在差异：在Bouba Ndjida国家公园和法鲁附近的狩猎区，贫瘠程度特别高。这种影响很可能与这些领域中更有效的管理策略有关。我们的精细长期监测技术提供了一种低成本，易于实施的多尺度有效工具，可用于识别区域和范围内的食肉动物保护热点。