Using Africa’s protected area network to estimate the global population of a threatened and declining species: a case study of the critically endangered White-headed Vulture Trigonoceps occipitalis

The White-headed Vulture Trigonoceps occipitalis (WhV) is uncommon and largely restricted to protected areas across its range in sub-Saharan Africa. We used the World Database on Protected Areas to identify protected areas (PAs) likely to contain White-headed Vultures. Vulture occurrence on road transects in Southern, East, and West Africa was adjusted to nests per km2 using data from areas with known numbers of nests and corresponding road transect data. Nest density was used to calculate the number of WhV nests within identified PAs and from there extrapolated to estimate the global population. Across a fragmented range, 400 PAs are estimated to contain 1893 WhV nests. Eastern Africa is estimated to contain 721 nests, Central Africa 548 nests, Southern Africa 468 nests, and West Africa 156 nests. Including immature and nonbreeding birds, and accounting for data deficient PAs, the estimated global population is 5475 - 5493 birds. The identified distribution highlights are alarming: over 78% (n = 313) of identified PAs contain fewer than five nests. A further 17% (n = 68) of PAs contain 5 - 20 nests and 4% (n = 14) of identified PAs are estimated to contain >20 nests. Just 1% (n = 5) of PAs are estimated to contain >40 nests; none is located in West Africa. Whilst ranging behavior of WhVs is currently unknown, 35% of PAs large enough to hold >20 nests are isolated by more than 100 km from other PAs. Spatially discrete and unpredictable mortality events such as poisoning pose major threats to small localized vulture populations and will accelerate ongoing local extinctions. Apart from reducing the threat of poisoning events, conservation actions promoting linkages between protected areas should be pursued. Identifying potential areas for assisted re-establishment via translocation offers the potential to expand the range of this species and alleviate risk.

The housing market channel of monetary policy transmission in the Euro area

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of the housing market in the monetary policy transmission to consumption among euro area member states. It has been argued that the housing market in one country is then important when its mortgage market is well developed. The countries in the euro area follow unitary monetary policy, however, their housing and mortgage markets show some heterogeneity, which may lead to different policy effects on aggregate consumption through the housing market. Design/methodology/approach – The housing market can act as a channel of monetary policy shocks to household consumption through changes in house prices and residential investment – the housing market channel. We estimate vector autoregressive models for each country and conduct a counterfactual analysis in order to disentangle the housing market channel and assess its importance across the euro area member states. Findings – We find little evidence for heterogeneity of the monetary policy transmission through house prices across the euro area countries. Housing market variations in the euro area seem to be better captured by changes in residential investment rather than by changes in house prices. As a result we do not find significantly large house price channels. For some of the countries however, we observe a monetary policy channel through residential investment. The existence of a housing channel may depend on institutional features of both the labour market or with institutional factors capturing the degree of household debt as is the LTV ratio. Originality/value – The study contributes to the existing literature by assessing whether a unitary monetary policy has a different impact on consumption across the euro area countries through their housing and mortgage markets. We disentangle monetary-policy-induced effects on consumption associated with variations on the housing markets due to either house price variations or residential investment changes. We show that the housing market can play a role in the monetary transmission mechanism even in countries with less developed mortgage markets through variations in residential investment.