SURVEY OF PRIORITY SITES OF CHIMPANZEES (Pan troglodytes ellioti) IN SOUTH WEST, NIGERIA

Abstract

Survey was conducted to confirming the presence of chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) in three priority sites of Omo, Oluwa and Ise Forest Reserves, Southwest, Nigeria. Data for the study were collected using direct and indirect indices through recce walk, Camera trapping were also employed. Nine kilometer recce walk was transverse in each site for seven days, making survey efforts of Twenty-seven kilometers for all the sites. All indices of Chimpanzee observed were geo-referenced using Global Positioning System (Model GPS Map 60c GARMIN) and uploaded into ArcGIS 10.3 while software environment was used to pictorially represent the acquired ground trotted data. Locations of all activities observed were recorded and plotted. Frequency Distribution, Chi-square and Pearson’s correlation were used to analyze all observation. The result shows that two direct camera trap encounter of chimpanzees were recorded in separate traps within the secondary forest complex of Omo. No direct encounter was observed in Ise and Oluwa Forest Reserves but species vocalization were heard with once near (= ≤ 0.5km) in Oluwa while once far (Far=≥0.5-1) and very far (Above=1km) were heard during the survey in Omo and Ise. A total of 52 indirect Chimpanzee activities from the three forest clusters were encountered with a fresh alpha male nest observed in Ise Forest Reserve. Nine different human threat indicators were identified within the chimpanzee distribution area which include, farming, used road, bark stripping, fire activities, spent cartridge, chain saw/gunshot, camp site and timber exploitation. Three Hundred and Twenty-Nine (329) individual human threats were recorded from all the forest locations with chain saw/gunshot and spent cartridge having the highest number of encounters (2.17 ± 0.20) and (2.00 ± 0.16) respectively while fire activity had the least number of occurrences (0.11 ± 0.08). Three activities namely Farming, used road and Timber extraction were moderately high during the survey with farming (1.06 ± 0.08) Used road (1.22 ± 0.16) and timber exploitation (1.17 ± 0.08) respectively. While Trap line (0.22 ± 0), Campsites (0.28 ± 0.08) and Tree bark stripping (0.50 ± 0.16) were extremely low in the region. There is no statistically significantinfluence between Chimpanzee presence that took place within Chimpanzee distribution (chi-square with two same degrees of freedom = 4.00, p = 0.14). This could be due to location specific as a result of restricted distribution resulting to low encounter in all the survey sites. While correlation analysis for threats indicators revealed that there is significant relationship which indicates that as threats in one location is increasing, threats in the other location is also increasing