What drives local communities' attitudes toward the protected area? Insights from Bardia National Park, Nepal

Abstract

Understanding the local communities' attitudes toward protected areas (PAs) is critical to PA management planning. However, what socio‐economic and demographic factors drive their attitude remains poorly studied. We interviewed 135 residents in three villages in the buffer zone of Bardia National Park, Nepal, to assess their perceived benefits and costs of the PA. We found that perceived benefits are skewed toward wealthy and influential people, whereas costs associated with wildlife‐caused damage (i.e., crop raiding) are borne disproportionately by poor people. The Tobit regression model showed that wealthy and educated residents who obtained direct tourism benefits from the park were significantly more likely to hold positive attitudes toward the PA. On the flip side, residents who had experienced conflict with park administration (park staff and military guards) and incurred a higher amount of crop loss in the recent past were likely to have negative attitudes. Our results showed that negative attitudes largely stemmed from park staff and military guards' behavior and inefficient service delivery from the national park office. In light of these findings, we suggest the park administration develop mechanisms to ensure efficient service delivery and pragmatic handling of community grievances concerning law enforcement and wildlife damage compensation. We also recommend directing park benefits to less educated and poor households and those suffering property losses from wildlife to improve park‐people relationships.

Investigated the role of community based approaches for biodiversity conservation and socio-economic development in Bale Mountains National Park, Southeast Ethiopia

“…Similarly study conducted by Ref. 29 , 30 indicated that the relationship between park and peoples were negative due to crop and livestock damage by wildlife, and restrictions imposed by the reserve authorities in collecting forest products. Moreover the pressure and conflict from conservation authorities, grazing fines, and benefits are for government.…”

Perceived benefits, burdens and effectiveness of a buffer zone programme in improving protected area–people relationships

“…Past studies conducted in Nepal's PAs have also concluded that local attitudes towards PAs have improved, especially in areas where local residents have directly or indirectly benefitted from the programmes conducted by a PA or the tourism that depends on it (Spiteri & Nepal 2008, Shahi et al 2023. Although the benefits generated from the PA itself are limited in order to substantially benefit a broader population, the BZP was intended to provide more benefits to local residents.…”

“…The level of respondent education was used as a control variable because education could impact how people perceive the value of PAs and affect perceptions of the relationship between people and PAs (Shahi et al 2023). This variable was measured using six levels of education (1 = no education at all, 2 = literate, 3 = some schooling, 4 = high school education, 5 = some college-level education, 6 = a college degree).…”

“…Whether and how locals perceive the benefits and associated regulatory restrictions introduced by such programmes may influence their feelings and attitudes towards PAs. For instance, several studies show that when residents perceived benefits in improved awareness, infrastructure, income-generating training and tourism, their attitudes towards PA staff tended to be positive; but when they suffered burdens (e.g., wildlife damage), their attitudes towards PA staff were more likely to be negative (Larson et al 2016, MacKenzie et al 2017, Shahi et al 2023. MacKenzie et al (2017) also highlighted that to understand local residents' perceptions of benefits and burdens over time, it is necessary to study their changes in attitudes and behaviours.…”

“…Nepal is one of the many countries where the BZ concept has been adopted to enhance PA governance. Like any other biodiverse country in the world, Nepal is also facing the issue of severe humanwildlife conflicts around PAs (Silwal et al 2017, Lamichhane et al 2019, Shahi et al 2023. To mitigate the growing human-wildlife as well as PA-people conflicts and to promote wildlife conservation, the Government of Nepal added its Buffer Zone Programme (BZP) in their fourth amendment of the National Park and Wildlife Conservation (NPWC) Act in 1992.…”