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Who compensates for wildlife conservation in Serengeti?

Posted: Thursday July 23, 2009 8:41 AM BT

By Kideghesho, Jafari R.; Mtoni, Paul E

The adage 'Serengeti shall never die' is popular globally, both as a means and an end for survival of one of the world's flagship conservation areas. Further to its role in inspiring conservation commitment, the slogan has also served as a legendary marketing catch-phrase for Serengeti's terrific tourism attractions

Abstract:
The adage 'Serengeti shall never die' is popular globally, both as a means and an end for survival of one of the world's flagship conservation areas. Further to its role in inspiring conservation commitment, the slogan has also served as a legendary marketing catch-phrase for Serengeti's terrific tourism attractions. Survival and prominence of Serengeti and its wildlife largely depend on the presence of a series of protected areas - tools construed as a solution to conservation problems. However, the fact that these areas are a source of numerous opportunity costs and other social and economic costs to local communities means that they have long been perceived as a liability.

Conservation of these areas has, therefore, emerged as one of the key challenges, due to hostility and opposition towards the conservation policies. This challenge inspires the need for a thorough understanding of how local people perceive these costs. This will provide an entry point and a basis for workable management interventions towards a win-win situation for both conservation interests and local people. In this paper we examine local people's perceptions of the costs they incur by virtue of sharing land with wildlife, in order to recognise the involuntary contribution they offer to ensure survival of Serengeti and its resources.

We argue that creation of protected areas and wildlife conservation imply numerous social and economic costs that are rarely compensated. We specifically address the following questions: What are the costs of living close to protected areas? Are all costs of equal importance to local communities? What are the possible effects of upgrading and expanding the boundaries of protected areas? How adequate and appropriate are the conservation benefits in compensating for the wildlife-induced costs? The results indicate that local people in Serengeti perceive the existing wildlife protected areas as a burden, due to competition for land and other resources, property damage and risk to life. Respondents also expressed a deep negativity on intervention that sought to upgrade the lower categories of protected areas because of the further costs that are likely to emerge. On benefits from conservation, there was a strong feeling that the benefits are too minimal to compensate for the costs they incur and do not address their immediate needs.

Authors: Kideghesho, Jafari R.; Mtoni, Paul E.
Source: The International Journal of Biodiversity Science and Management, Volume 4, Number 2, June 2008 , pp. 112-125(14)
Publisher: Sapiens Publishing

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