Global Indicators

The biodiversity conservation community has set a target to achieve a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the global, regional and national level by 2010. When the world’s governments will meet at the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Conference of the Parties (COP) to assess whether their target has been met, one of the key questions policy-makers will ask is whether protected areas are successfully maintaining biodiversity. Despite a long history of research,  the conservation community currently has no reliable answer to this question. The next step in measuring our success is to synthesize our current knowledge and develop new initiatives that will provide an efficient and standardized account of the current status of biodiversity throughout the world.

The Wildlife Picture Index

Camera traps offer a tool to monitor elusive animals such as tigers.

WCS, in collaboration with the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), is developing a site-based Wildlife Picture Index that measures the success of species conservation in protected areas at national, regional and global scales based on innovative camera trapping techniques. This novel approach will provide the first global indicator capable of identifying where conservation and wilderness areas are protecting species. New advances in camera trapping methods have made it possible to monitor trends in the diversity, abundance, and distribution of a broad range of terrestrial mammals and birds, including nocturnal, rare and elusive animals (such as leopards) that have been traditionally difficult to study using other techniques. Camera trapping is also an excellent medium for communicating wildlife trends to policy makers and the general public, producing images that capture the imagination and allow people to relate to the species that are being monitored.

A camera trap picture of a siamang gibbon

The WPI aims to identify protected and wilderness areas where species are declining most rapidly so that appropriate conservation measures can be taken. At the local level, WPI data can be used to assist in adaptive wildlife management. For areas where conservation actions or measures have been implemented they will help to assess whether these actions are having the intended effect. In areas that allow activities of sustainable use (such as controlled hunting), it will help to indicate whether these activities are truly sustainable.

A camera trap picture captures the rare

The WPI will provide a key indicator for measuring progress towards the CBD target of reducing the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. Camera trap data collected from the WPI network will be used to produce a Global Picture Index; a global site-based indicator that tracks changes in biodiversity in conservation and wilderness areas based on rates of population change and change in area occupied for suites of vertebrate species. The WPI data will also contribute to a broad range of other CBD indicators, including those focusing on sustainable use and invasive or threatened species.