BIOTA-West is an interdisciplinary cross-national subproject of the project network BIOTA AFRICA. Therein, German and Western african partners are engaged in closed collaboration in biodiversity research in Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso and Benin. Goal is to identificate processes leading to a species decrease and to develop methods for their conservation. Building up a continental monitoring network of african biodiversity and land degradation shall deliver decision makers scientific established and socio economic basics for an efficient and sustained environmental management.