Elsevier

Journal of Environmental Management

Volume 200, 15 September 2017, Pages 217-228
Journal of Environmental Management

Research article
Changing perceptions of protected area benefits and problems around Kibale National Park, Uganda

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2017.05.078Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Percentage of households claiming benefit decreased over time.

  • Percentage claiming problems increased over time with elephant abundance.

  • Benefit influenced by employment, tourism, revenue sharing and resource access.

  • Improving benefits overshadowed by crop raiding problems.

  • Wildlife conflict dominated but problem mitigated by ecosystem service benefit.

Abstract

Local residents' changing perceptions of benefits and problems from living next to a protected area in western Uganda are assessed by comparing household survey data from 2006, 2009, and 2012. Findings are contextualized and supported by long-term data sources for tourism, protected area-based employment, tourism revenue sharing, resource access agreements, and problem animal abundance. We found decreasing perceived benefit and increasing perceived problems associated with the protected area over time, with both trends dominated by increased human-wildlife conflict due to recovering elephant numbers. Proportions of households claiming benefit from specific conservation strategies were increasing, but not enough to offset crop raiding. Ecosystem services mitigated perceptions of problems. As human and animal populations rise, wildlife authorities in Sub-Saharan Africa will be challenged to balance perceptions and adapt policies to ensure the continued existence of protected areas. Understanding the dynamic nature of local people's perceptions provides a tool to adapt protected area management plans, prioritize conservation resources, and engage local communities to support protected areas.

Introduction

Conservation policies in East Africa, particularly those for national parks, have favoured the protectionist approach. This approach is viewed by many conservationists as the most effective means of biodiversity conservation (Chapman et al., 2016, Gray et al., 2016). However over the past four decades, the conservation narrative has evolved to recognize that poverty in communities near protected areas (PAs) may constrain conservation (Adams et al., 2004), and that communities near PAs disproportionally accrue the costs of conservation (MacKenzie, 2012a, Brockington and Wilkie, 2015). As a result, conservation policies have evolved, calling for benefits to incentivize local residents to support conservation while alleviating poverty (Brockington and Wilkie, 2015), partnering with stakeholders (Liberati et al., 2016), and providing payments for ecosystem services (Suich et al., 2015). Although PAs can exist without support from local communities (Holmes, 2013), compliance with PA regulations, conservation attitudes, and support for PA existence are enhanced if needs of local communities are met, if local communities benefits from conservation and tourism, if community members participate in PA decision-making, and if conservation strategies are adapted based upon perceptions of local people (Tessema et al., 2010, Allendorf et al., 2012, Andrade and Rhodes, 2012, Mutanga et al., 2015). Adopting this adaptive community-conservation strategy requires an on-going commitment to local engagement to understand the changing dynamics of local perceptions about the PA (Allendorf et al., 2012). In this paper we examine shifting local perceptions of benefits and problems associated with living next to a Ugandan national park from 2006 to 2012, and the associated implications for PA management.

Despite burgeoning efforts by conservation managers to manage landscapes for both biodiversity and human wellbeing, people perceive widespread negative effects of living near PAs (Sarker and Røskaft, 2011, Namukonde and Kachali, 2015). The creation of PAs can force the displacement of people, resulting in hardship and loss (Brockington and Igoe, 2006, Salerno et al., 2014), and restrictions on resource access can limit livelihood activities (West et al., 2006). Wildlife roam outside PA boundaries, damaging and eating crops, attacking livestock, and even maiming or killing local residents (Dickman et al., 2011, Sarker and Røskaft, 2011, Namukonde and Kachali, 2015). There can also be benefits to living next to a PA that may help offset the costs incurred, such as ecosystem services (Namukonde and Kachali, 2015, Suich et al., 2015) and tourism. Tourism is becoming a promising revenue source for many developing countries and may provide employment and marketing opportunities for communities near tourist destinations (Ferraro and Hanauer, 2014, Naidoo et al., 2016). Other PA benefits include payments for ecosystem services (Suich et al., 2015), sharing hunting and tourism revenues (Naidoo et al., 2016), negotiated access to PA resources (Sarker and Røskaft, 2011), employment as research assistants and planting trees for carbon sequestration (Dempsey and Suarez, 2016), and non-governmental organizational aid for schools, medical clinics and income generation projects (Chapman et al., 2015, MacKenzie et al., 2015).

The extent and magnitude of problems and benefits that PAs confer upon local communities vary (Brockington and Wilkie, 2015), with local geography and PA proximity contributing to varying perceptions of costs and benefits (MacKenzie, 2012a). Close proximity to park boundaries increases the likelihood of crop raiding and livestock predation (Salerno et al., 2016), yet closer proximity may afford greater access to employment or PA-associated services, and access to PA resources, officially sanctioned or not (MacKenzie et al., 2011, Baird, 2014). While conservation strategies typically account for changing forest ecology, wildlife populations, and biophysical conditions, far less consideration is given to changing perceptions of PA neighbors (Berkes, 2004, Allendorf et al., 2012).

The Ugandan Government has made remarkable steps to conserve biodiversity in a country where human population density is increasing at one of the fastest rates in the world (Hartter et al., 2015). Conservation policy in Uganda has evolved from pure protectionism to a PA-neighbor strategy. While the shift in strategy includes efforts to provide benefits to neighboring households, the increasing population densities, declining resource availability, and recovering wildlife populations of some species may serve to exacerbate existing tensions and outweigh benefits. It remains unclear how perceptions and experiences parallel shifts in conservation policy. To address this uncertainty, we combine three data sources to quantify changes in perceptions over time. Although not initially designed for temporal comparison, we compare data from three household surveys collected in 2006, 2009, and 2012 and triangulate that comparison with long-term data to understand the changing perceptions of local people about the benefits accrued and problems encountered as a result of living next to Kibale National Park (hereafter Kibale). We ask: (1) how are household perceptions of PA-based benefits and problems distributed over space, time, and household wealth categories? and (2) what factors are influencing the changing perceptions of benefits and problems? We discuss the implications of our findings for conservation management and how adaptive management at the people-PA interface must be incorporated into conservation planning.

Section snippets

Study site

Kibale (795 km2) is located in western Uganda (Fig. 1), and contains the highest primate density of all PAs in East Africa (UWA, 2015), and one of the highest in the world (Chapman et al., 2010a). It provides critical habitat to eastern chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii), 12 additional primate species, elephants (Loxodonta africana), and a diversity of other species (Chapman and Lambert, 2000). The authority to manage PAs in Uganda belongs to Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) as

Benefits and problems of living near Kibale National Park

Across the three surveys (2006, 2009, 2012), the percentage of households claiming benefit from Kibale has decreased, while the percentage claiming problems has increased (Table 1). Some respondents claimed both benefits and problems from Kibale (2006 = 15%, 2009 = 25% & 2012 = 21%). The binary logistic model of perceiving benefit from Kibale is positively influenced by four of the specific benefits (PA-based employment, tourism, revenue sharing, and resource access), but not by ecosystem

Discussion

Perceptions of people living adjacent to PAs can greatly impact conservation outcomes. For example, decisions regarding illegally taking resources from PAs or supporting wildlife authorities to protect PAs can be informed by the problems faced, and benefits accrued by local residents (Arjunan et al., 2006, Andrade and Rhodes, 2012). Although Kibale is a relatively small forested PA, the challenges faced by conservation management and local residents in many ways exemplify the challenges in

Conclusions

Our findings provide evidence of decreasing perceived benefit and increasing perceived problems associated with the PA over time. However, both of these trends are dominated by increased human-wildlife conflict as a result of recovering elephant numbers. Although conservation policies to provide benefits to local communities, including PA-based employment, tourism development, revenue sharing, and resource access agreements, were effectively increasing the proportion of households claiming

Acknowledgements

Research permissions were given by the Uganda National Council for Science and Technology, the Uganda Wildlife Authority, and local leadership around Kibale. We would like to thank our Ugandan assistants, and all survey participants. Funding for the 2006 survey was provided by the National Science Foundation (GRS 0352008). Funding for the 2009 survey was provided by the Theo L. Hills Memorial Fund and McGill Faculty of Science African Field Work Award. Funding for the 2012 survey was provided

References (58)

  • H. Suich et al.

    Ecosystem services and poverty alleviation: a review of the empirical links

    Ecosyst. Serv.

    (2015)
  • W.M. Adams et al.

    Biodiversity conservation and the eradication of poverty

    Science

    (2004)
  • B. Adiyia et al.

    Spatial analysis of tourism income distribution in the accommodation sector in western Uganda

    Tour. Hosp. Res.

    (2014)
  • G.S. Andrade et al.

    Protected areas and local communities: an inevitable partnership towards successful conservation strategies?

    Ecol. Soc.

    (2012)
  • T.D. Baird

    Conservation and unscripted development: proximity to park associated with development and financial diversity

    Ecol. Soc.

    (2014)
  • F. Berkes

    Rethinking community-based conservation

    Conserv. Biol.

    (2004)
  • D. Brockington et al.

    Evictions for conservation: a global overview

    Conserv. Soc.

    (2006)
  • D. Brockington et al.

    Protected areas and poverty

    Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci.

    (2015)
  • D.W. Challender et al.

    Poaching is more than an enforcement problem

    Conserv. Lett.

    (2014)
  • C.A. Chapman et al.

    Habitat alteration and the conservation of African primates: case study of Kibale National Park, Uganda

    Am. J. Primatol.

    (2000)
  • C.A. Chapman et al.

    Understanding long-term primate community dynamics: implications of forest change

    Ecol. Appl.

    (2010)
  • C.A. Chapman et al.

    Safeguarding biodiversity: what is perceived as working, according to the conservation community?

    Oryx

    (2016)
  • C.A. Chapman et al.

    Providing health care to improve community perceptions of protected areas

    Oryx

    (2015)
  • J. Clifton et al.

    Planning for sustainable ecotourism: the case for research tourism in developing country destinations

    J. Sustain. Tour.

    (2006)
  • J. Dempsey et al.

    Arrested development? the promise and paradoxes of “selling nature to save it”

    Ann. Am. Assoc. Geogr.

    (2016)
  • A.J. Dickman et al.

    A review of financial instruments to pay for predator conservation and encourage human-carnivore coexistence

    PNAS

    (2011)
  • P.J. Ferraro et al.

    Quantifying causal mechanisms to determine how protected areas affect poverty through changes in ecosystem services and infrastructure

    Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci.

    (2014)
  • M.E. Gadd

    Conservation outside of parks: attitudes of local people in Laikipia, Kenya

    Environ. Conserv.

    (2005)
  • A. Goldman et al.

    The human landscape around the island park: impacts and responses to Kibale National Park

  • Cited by (65)

    • Towards equitable conservation: Social capital, fear and livestock loss shape perceived benefit from a protected area

      2022, Journal of Environmental Management
      Citation Excerpt :

      Importantly, the appropriate involvement of local communities is a core component of just conservation in and around PAs (VUCETICH et al., 2018). Relationships between PAs and local communities, however, can be strained, especially if local people perceive excessive costs or insufficient benefits (THONDHLANA and CUNDILL, 2017; ALLENDORF et al., 2012; VON RUSCHKOWSKI, 2009; MACKENZIE et al., 2017). The balance of costs and benefits from nearby PAs can affect economic development and individual well-being (JACOBSEN et al., 2020; ZHANG et al., 2020), as well as the likelihood of local people adhering to PA rules and regulations (LEE et al., 2009; MBANZE et al., 2021).

    • The complexity of the conservation-development nexus in Central African national parks and the perceptions of local populations

      2022, Journal for Nature Conservation
      Citation Excerpt :

      Revenue-sharing and compensation schemes have started to be implemented in the last decades with mixed success (Ogra & Badola, 2008). Communities seem to have positive views (40.5%) on such projects and this could help to raise positive perceptions of conservation measures (McKenzie et al., 2017). We found that human-wildlife conflicts and revenue-sharing schemes have mixed outcomes as they are mentioned as reasons for both better and less well-off situations due to conservation measures.

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text