Passive acoustic monitoring as a law enforcement tool for Afrotropical rainforests

Abstract

Hunting for wild meat is pervasive in Afrotropical forests and often the primary threat to large-bodied mammals even within protected areas, the effectiveness of which (at reducing hunting) is correlated with law enforcement efforts, especially anti-poaching patrols. However, although tropical protected areas are critically underfunded and law enforcement accounts for a substantial proportion of their budgets, few have mechanisms in place to evaluate and adaptively adjust anti-poaching strategies based on robust field evidence.