Wildlife within protected areas is under increasing threat from bushmeat and illegal trophy trades, and many argue that enforcement within protected areas is not sufficient to protect wildlife. We examined 50 years of records from Serengeti National Park in Tanzania and calculated the history of illegal harvest and enforcement by park authorities. We show that a precipitous decline in enforcement in 1977 resulted in a large increase in poaching and decline of many species. Conversely, expanded budgets and antipoaching patrols since the mid-1980s have greatly reduced poaching and allowed populations of buffalo, elephants, and rhinoceros to rebuild.
Illegal hunting of resident and migratory herbivores is widespread in the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania. To devise effective strategies to reduce levels of hunting, information is required on why people are involved in illegal hunting and the role of bushmeat in the local economy. Participation in hunting may be influenced by measures of relative wealth, including livestock ownership, means of generating cash income and access to alternative sources of meat. Data came from 300 individuals responding to a questionnaire in 10 villages, from responses by 359 people in 24 group discussions in another 12 villages, and from 552 people arrested and interviewed in the National Park. A smaller proportion of individual respondents (32%) than group respondents (57%) volunteered that they participated in illegal hunting. Most individual and group respondents were subsistence farmers who considered bushmeat to be a source of protein and a means of generating cash income. Three-quarters of those arrested participated in hunting primarily to generate cash income and a quarter claimed that they only hunted to obtain food. Participation in illegal hunting decreased as wealth in terms of the number of sheep and goats owned increased. People with access to alternative means of generating income or acquiring protein were also less likely to be involved in illegal hunting. Arrested respondents were typically young adult males with low incomes and few or no livestock. Illegal hunting was not reduced by participation in community-based conservation pro-grammes. Results suggested that between 52 000 and 60 000 people participated in illegal hunting within protected areas, and that many young men (approximately 5200) derived their primary source of income from hunting.
We examine tourism demand for an iconic ecological resource -the migration of ~1.3 million wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus) in the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem. The wildebeest migration generates economic benefits through ecotourism, which we investigated by combining quantitative tools from spatial ecology and environmental economics with wildebeest GPS collar data and lodge use data from Serengeti National Park. We used GLMMs and random utility models to quantify the effect of the distance from lodges to wildebeest hotspots on two important aspects of demand: the number of tourists visiting lodges in the park (participation); and the tourists' choice of where to stay during their visit (site choice). We find that longer distances between lodges and wildebeest hotspots significantly reduced tourist participation (i.e. the total number of tourists visiting lodges) and site choice (the probability of tourist groups choosing a lodge). Lodge price had a positive effect on participation, but it did not affect site choice for international tourist groups. Whilst our results are specific to the Serengeti, the methods presented here can be applied to any system in which non-consumptive wildlife viewing is the foundation of local ecotourism. As such, this novel approach provides a new perspective on the economics of wildlife management and strengthens the case for the continued conservation of ecosystems that contain wildlife resources. Due to the high value of the wildebeest migration to tourism, we suggest that future expansion of tourist infrastructure in the Serengeti should proceed in ways that minimise disturbance to this living resource.
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