Trophy hunting (TH) tourism plays an important and often controversial role in wildlife conservation and community livelihood in many African countries. Despite its potential social and economic benefits, TH can have a negative impact among the locals and pose critical challenges in governance. However, research on the local community perspective of TH and how it is linked to empowerment of locals and wildlife conservation in Namibia remains limited. Therefore, to address these gaps, our study explores how communities of Namibia's Bwabwata National Park perceive TH and how TH supports or hinders empowerment of local communities and their relationship with wildlife. Through semistructured interviews with community members, this study elucidates the economic benefits and inequities, cultural impacts from lack of traditional hunting, perceived relationship to poaching, and limitations of governance and distrust among stakeholders. This research innovatively applies empowerment theory to TH tourism and thus, can strengthen and inform sound governance and sustainable practices of TH at local, national, and international levels by providing the local perspective that has largely been absent from the TH debate.

Namibia is a semi-arid country and underground water sources have proven to be reliable water sources for drought-prone countries. Underground water has the ability to sustain conservation activities as long as water infrastructure is in place and maintained. Despite the different water requirements for the wildlife species, water remains an essential component of wildlife management in Namibia. Therefore, this study aims at understanding utilization of water points by various wildlife species in the Nyae Nyae conservancies, which is located in the north-eastern part of Namibia. This study used monitoring data from wildlife counts that are conducted by the Conservancy annually at water points coupled with key-informant interviews with local conservancy members and leaders as well as some stakeholders. The study shows that the Conservancy had a diverse number of wildlife species that were predominantly ungulates (70%). These species were detected at 29 water points distributed across the Conservancy. Most of the water points in the conservancy were artificial points with water drawn from the underground water sources, while a few of the water points were pans (17%). Water resources are very important resources for conservation, not only in terms of being used by wildlife but also in terms of being used to provide an indication of species diversity in the conservation.