Sino-French laboratory of Wildlife Management and Ecosystem Health (WiMEH)

中法野生动植物管理与生态系统健康联合实验室

Presentation

Originally established in 2012 at the University of Finance and Economics in Kunming, Yunnan, the Sino-French laboratory of Wildlife Management and Ecosystem Health (WiMEH lab) has become a research laboratory of the School of Life Science at Leshan Normal University, Sichuan, in 2024. The WiMEH lab conducts research in wildlife ecology and conservation in Yunnan and Sichuan. It focuses on conflicts between wildlife and humans and how these can be avoided, reduced or mitigated. Research is based on field studies and mobilises networks of stakeholders such as forest and nature reserve managers and health professionals. It integrates methods from landscape ecology and molecular genetics within an Ecohealth/One Health framework. The aim is to provide stakeholders with concepts, vulnerability and risk models and scenarios to support decision making and environmental management in the context of global change.

It has evolved in a "beyond the walls" laboratory, drawing on the expertise of a network of several international research laboratories and researchers able to work complementarily on the issues addressed by the WiMEH lab.

We are currently developing programmes on:

• Yunnan Black and White Snub Nosed Monkey conservation

  

  Male of Black and White Snub-Nosed Monkey, Rhinopitecus bieti, in Tacheng National Park

• from 2014 onwards, Tibetan macaque and wildlife tourism

We also pay a particular attention to Wild Asian elephant - human conflicts and are in regular contact with the Xishuangbanna national reserve.

Wild elephants in a coffee plantation, in JiangCheng Hani and Yi Autonomous County， Pu’er prefecture

Field stations

Three of them are located in the Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan Protected Areas, one of the most biodiverse and least disturbed mountain ecosystems in the world, according to UNESCO, in the uppers of the Nu Jiang - 怒江 (Salween), LanCang Jiang - 澜沧江 (upper Mekong), and JinSha Jiang - 金沙江 (upper YangTse).

Lab members

name	Title	Position	Fields of expertise
LI Li - 李丽	Professor, Dr	Director	Conservation biology and research logistics
JIAN Tao - 江滔	Professor, Dr ; vice-president of the LSNU	Administrative director	Waste resource utilization and greenhouse gas emission reduction
Patrick GIRAUDOUX	Distinguished Professor, Dr	Foreign director	Wildlife ecology, ecohealth/one health, spatial modelling
Eve AFONSO	Distinguished Professor, Dr	Vice-foreign director	Conservation biology and molecular genetics
Frédéric GIMBERT	Senior lecturer UMLP	Researcher	Ecotoxicology
GUO YuRong - 郭玉红	Professor, Dr	Researcher	Field ecology
Chang Jiali - 常佳丽	Professor, Dr	Researcher	Microbial molecular ecology, gut microbiota, environmental resistome, and ecological damage assessment
Tang Haixia - 唐海霞	Master	Manager	Data manager, coordination and field work

Visiting PhD students

PhD students registered in other universities can be co-supervised by professors at their registration institutions and WiMH lab members. They are in permanent contact with WiMEH lab professors and regularly participate to workshops at the WiMEH lab and in the GDRI EHEDE network.

name	Title	Position	Fields of expertise
Qin Fubing - 覃富兵	Doctoral student (Beijing Normal University)	Researcher	Behavioural ecology

See also GDRI EHEDE Doctorates and masters...

"Beyond the wall" laboratory

WiMEH lab draws on the expertise of researchers able to work complementarily on the issues addressed by the WiMEH lab.

Examples of researchers having co-authored scientific articles or/and participated to training sessions:

Honorary members/academics

name	Position	Activity field
LI DiQiang - 李迪强	Chief researcher of the Chinese Forestry Science Research Institute, of the Forest Ecological Environment Protection Institute of Nature Reserves	President of the Ministry of Science and three Technology support project sub-projects. He successively presided over the Ministry of Science and Technology of natural science and technology resource platform project, the nature of biological specimens consolidation and sharing of pilot, social welfare project endangered animal protection technology, the National Natural Science Foundation project Przewalski gazelle population dynamics and landscape heterogeneity research, the State Forestry Administration Project nature reserve social economy and ecological value research, nature reserve monitoring technology research, wild animal value assessment research and international cooperation projects in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River forest ecological zone system protection plan and the Northeast Inner Mongolia forest nature reserve planning project.
LONG YongCheng - 龙勇诚	Chief Scientist at the Alashan Society of Enterprenor Ecology (SEE)’s Southwest China Center, and at The Nature Conservancy	Primate ecology and conservation
ZHANG Li - 张立	Professor at the Beijing Normal University. Member of the ethics committee of the International Union of Biological Science (IUBS), member of the Chinese national committee of IUBS, general secretary of the Chinese committee of the International Society for Conservation Biology, director and deputy general secretary of the Chinese Animal Society, general secretary of the Alashan SEE foundation	Animal behaviour and conservation biology, Asian elephant population and behavioural ecology,、habitat restoration and conservation genetics, monitoring and enforcement for the wildlife trade

Recent international articles

Giraudoux, P., Afonso, E., Clauzel, C., Callou, C., Li, L., 2024. Conservation du Rhinopithèque de Biet (Rhinopithecus bieti) et tourisme animalier : quels enjeux ?/黑白仰鼻猴的保护与野生动物旅游：面临的问题是什么？Bulletin de l’Académie Vétérinaire de France epub, 1–16. (in French and in Chinese)

Afonso, E., Callou, C., Clauzel, C., Giraudoux, P., Li, L., 2022. Conservation of the Black and White Snub-nosed Monkey, in: Giraudoux, P. (Ed.), Socioecosystems. ISTE - Wiley Sciences, Londres, pp. 201–234.

Afonso E, Fu R, Dupaix A, Goydadin AC, Yu ZH, Callou C, Villette P, Giraudoux P, Li L 2021 Feeding sites promoting wildlife-related tourism might highly expose the endangered Yunnan snub-nosed monkey (Rhinopithecus bieti) to parasite transmission. Scientific Reports 11, 15817

Afonso E., Fu R., Dupaix A., Goydadin A.-C., Yu Z., Li D., Giraudoux P., Li L. (2021). Creating small food-habituated groups might alter genetic diversity in the endangered Yunnan snub-nosed monkey. Global Ecology and Conservation, 26, e01422.

Giraudoux P, Zhao YM, Afonso E, Yan HB, Knapp J, Rogan M, Shi DZ, Jia WZ, Craig PS 2019 Long-term retrospective assessment of a transmission hotspot for human alveolar echinococcosis in mid-west China. PLoS NTD, 13(8): e0007701.

Craig PS, Giraudoux P, Wang ZH, Wang Q 2019. Echinococcosis transmission on the Tibetan Plateau. Advances in parasitology, 104: 165-246.

Zhang Y., Clauzel C, Li J, Xue YD, Zhang YG, Wu GS, Giraudoux P, Li L, Li DQ, 2018. Identifying refugia and corridors under climate change conditions for the Sichuan snub-nosed monkey (Rhinopithecus roxellana) in Hubei Province, China. Ecology and Evolution, 9(4) : 1680-1690.

Li, W., Liu, P., Guo, X., Wang, L., Wang, Q., Yu, Y., Dai, Y., Li, L., Zhang, L., 2018. Human-elephant conflict in Xishuangbanna Prefecture, China: Distribution, diffusion, and mitigation. Global Ecology and Conservation 16, e00462.

Fu R, Li L, Yu ZH, Afonso E, Giraudoux P 2018. Spatial and temporal distribution of Yunnan snub-nosed monkey, Rhinopithecus bieti, indices. Mammalia. 83 (2).

Li WW, Clauzel C, Dai YC, Wu GS, Giraudoux P, Li L 2017 Improving landscape connectivity for the Yunnan snub-nosed monkey through cropland reforestation using graph theory. Journal for Nature Conservation, 38: 46-55.

Clauzel C, Deng X, Wu G, Giraudoux P, Li L 2015 Assessing the impact of road developments on connectivity across multiple scales: application to Yunnan snub-nosed monkey conservation. Biological Conservation. 192: 207–217.

Li L, Xue YD, Wu GS, Li DQ, Giraudoux P 2015. Potential habitat corridors and restoration areas for the black-and-white snub-nosed monkey Rhinopithecus bieti in Yunnan, China. Oryx 49: 719-726.

See also...

• YUFE - GDRI EHEDE partners meeting days, Kunming (2018)
• YUFE - GDRI EHEDE partners meeting days, Kunming (2017)
• Ecohealth and conservation workshop 2016, Kunming