An Analysis of Communities’ Attitudes Toward Wildlife and Implications for Wildlife Sustainability

Abstract

Negative human-wildlife interactions do not only have adverse effects on rural livelihoods but also lead to negative attitudes toward wildlife conservation. This research uses primary data collected from 221 randomly selected households in the Okavango Delta to analyze their perceptions on poaching and community involvement in anti-poaching activities. The results reveal that the majority of the respondents acknowledge the existence of poaching within their communities. Close to 50% of the respondents noted that they poach for subsistence purposes. There is a generally low participation rate in antipoaching efforts in the study area. The study concludes that the negative attitudes of communities toward wildlife and wildlife conservation threaten wildlife sustainability in the Okavango Delta. There is a need to strike an intricate balance between wildlife conservation and improving communities' welfare and tolerance to wildlife through designing effective institutions that are aligned to local realities.

Community-Based Approaches to Tackling Illegal Wildlife Trade—What Works and How Is It Measured?

“…Given these are community-based interventions, we would have expected them to report some kind of benefit to communities in order to reduce their reliance on poaching and subsequently decrease IWT. Local support is important for conservation and so the problem with relying on measures of success that are purely ecological is that it ignores the human dimensions that are needed to make an intervention effective (Nilsson et al, 2016;Mogomotsi et al, 2020). Case studies that were reported to be effective, but that did not measure livelihood contributions as part of their overall evaluation, may therefore risk oversimplifying or overestimating their results (Woodhouse et al, 2015).…”

“…However, top-down approaches, including the use of militarized tactics, often fail to account for underlying motivations behind poaching (Challender and MacMillan, 2014), and can worsen already strained people-park relations and lead to human rights abuses (Duffy et al, 2015;Massé et al, 2017). In ignoring historic costs of conservation, heavy-handed enforcement efforts can both remove incentives for local people to engage in conservation (Cooney et al, 2016;Ngorima et al, 2020) and provide incentives to engage in illegal behavior (Hübschle and Shearing, 2018;Lunstrum and Givá, 2020;Mogomotsi et al, 2020).…”

Evaluation of Soft Skill Training to Strengthen Collaborative Management of National Parks in Sumatera, Indonesia

“…Apart from the goals of conserving biodiversity and wildlife, as a system, national parks should have objectives of economic development, inclusion and social benefit-sharing (Oldekop et al, 2016). Social approaches and community empowerment by national parks are important to achieve positive conservation results (Mogomotsi et al, 2020). Staffs should liaise with community members in all aspects of management from planning and decision-making to implementation.…”

The evolution of regional wildlife conservation, environmental protection and anti-poaching law in the Southern African development community

“…154 Negative attitudes toward wildlife by local communities due to the damage they cause to their crops and livestock lead retaliatory killings and at times involvement in poaching activities, undermining wildlife sustainability. 155 In an attempt to address the concerns of communities living adjacent national parks and other wildlife conservation management areas, the SADC Wildlife Protocol imposes a duty to devise and implement community based wildlife management programmes. 156 The approach of SADC countries finds scientific basis from some scholars who have argued that the interactions in human-wildlife can only be improved when local communities' experiences are understood and addressed.…”