Negative interactions between humans and wildlife create one of the greatest threats to biodiversity conservation. When wild animals damage the crops in agricultural fields, subsistence farmers suffer food insecurity and economic instability. Animals can be killed or injured during these interactions, and communities may develop negative feelings about conservation. To address conservation concerns, projects should look at both sides of these interactions. A Participatory Action Research approach allows researchers and community members to work collaboratively to investigate and take action in response to this issue. Our team developed a community project to determine residents' perceptions of the benefits and costs of living around Kibale National Park, Uganda, and to implement changes to mitigate those costs. During our initial survey in 2015, we found that over 80% of our 114 respondents were subsistence farmers with no other source of income. All respondents felt that crop damage by wild animals was the biggest problem with living near the park, and they had negative feelings about the park and animals. Thus, we worked with project participants to establish the following land‐use changes throughout 2016 and 2017: (a) planting garlic as a cash crop, (b) planting tea as a buffer crop, (c) building beehive fences, and (d) maintaining a trench around the boundary of the park. Through monthly surveys, we assessed the success of these changes on reducing crop damage and improving conservation initiatives. Compliance with land‐use changes was significantly associated with a reduction in the events of crop damage, which has implications for economic stability and an individual's attitude about conservation. This project provides guidelines for using Participatory Action Research methods to develop sustainable interventions to improve human‐wildlife interactions.
The attitudes of community members living around protected areas are an important and often overlooked consideration for effective conservation strategies. Around Kibale National Park (KNP) in western Uganda, communities regularly face the threat of crop destruction from wildlife, including from a variety of endangered species, such as African elephants (Loxodonta africana), common chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), and red colobus monkeys (Piliocolobus tephrosceles), as well as other nonhuman primates, including olive baboons (Papio anubis). These frequent negative interactions with wildlife lead many community members to resent the park and the animals that live within it. To mitigate these issues, community members around KNP partnered with researchers to start a participatory action research project to reduce human-wildlife interactions. The project tested four sustainable human-wildlife conflict mitigation strategies: digging and maintaining trenches around the park border, installing beehive fences in swampy areas where trenches could not be dug, planting tea as a buffer, and growing garlic as a cash crop. These physical exclusion methods and agriculture-based deterrents aimed to reduce crop destruction by wild animals and improve conditions for humans and wildlife alike. We conducted oral surveys with members of participating communities and a nonparticipating community that border KNP to determine the impact of these sustainable human-wildlife conflict mitigation strategies on attitudes toward KNP, wildlife officials, and animal species in and around KNP. We found that there is a positive correlation between participation in the project and perceived benefits of living near KNP. We also found that respondents who participated in the project reported more positive feelings about the Uganda Wildlife Authority, the organization that oversees KNP. This research will help inform future conservation initiatives around KNP and other areas where humans and animals face conflict through crop damage.
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