Effective Enforcement in a Conservation Area

Abstract

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.

Evaluating the protection of wildlife in parks: the case of African buffalo in Serengeti

“…Our results explain the spatial variation in buffalo population recovery across the protected area and elaborate on the work of Hilborn et al (2006), which confined itself to the time Year Buffalo Population trends of the whole buffalo population. Buffalo population changes are best explained largely by hunting but model fit was improved with the addition of predation mortality.…”

“…At that time the population was recovering from the impacts of the viral disease, rinderpest, and numbers subsequently increased to a peak of 74,237 in 197574,237 in (Sinclair 1977. Shortly after that, in 1977, anti-hunting activities were severely restricted by an economic crisis in Tanzania (Hilborn et al 2006;Sinclair and Arcese 1995b) and widespread hunting on this species (and others) followed (Dublin et al 1990a). By 1992 anti-hunting efforts had returned but the population had been reduced to 36,119 animals, some 49% of the peak number.…”

“…The relative hunting effort (P) is poachers arrested per number of patrols day -1 (see Hilborn et al 2006. Figure 1b).…”

“…We used a spatially structured population dynamics model to determine the trends in buffalo abundance in the five different regions between 1965 and 2008 (Hilborn et al 2006). We examined a range of possible influences on abundance.…”

“…Declines in the numbers of large herbivores were attributed to cessation of anti-poaching activities during a period of economic decline. Analysis of the trends in the buffalo population over the whole area has suggested that population change was primarily due to illegal hunting, and that enforcement of wildlife laws reduced the illegal offtake (Hilborn et al 2006) a conclusion also reached for other areas (Hilborn et al 2006;Jachmann and Billiouw 1997;Keane et al 2008;Leader-Williams and Milner-Gulland 1993). Using 50 years of buffalo census data, Hilborn et al (2006) established that illegal hunting and enforcement activities could account for the overall trends in buffalo population yet examination of the buffalo total counts indicated variation in the buffalo population recovery; some areas have almost completely recovered from the population low of 1994 and other areas have failed to recover.…”