Larger conservation areas didn't protect animals in central Africa
Without funding, parks stretched resources thin, study finds

Date:
November 15, 2021
Source:
Ohio State University
Summary:
Efforts to protect threatened and endangered species in central
Africa might be more successful if they focused on a smaller
geographic area, new research suggests.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Efforts to protect threatened and endangered species in central Africa
might be more successful if they focused on a smaller geographic area,
new research suggests.


==========================================================================
The study, which examined multi-species population counts in the seven
main savanna national parks of central Africa, found that broader
conservation efforts often led to decreased populations, likely because
the lands were too large to manage effectively with the financial
resources available.

"In a lot of Africa, there has been a lot of space set aside for
wildlife," said Mark Moritz, co-author on the study and an anthropology professor at The Ohio State University. "And what we've found is setting
aside so much land is not sufficient in and of itself, and a lot of
these protected areas are protected on paper only." The researchers'
analysis found that to effectively protect animals in those areas, significantly more funding would also be needed.

Their study was published Friday, Nov. 12 in the journal Conservation
Biology.

The study evaluated population counts in four countries in central
Africa, in regions where 25% of the land had already been set aside
for conservation.



==========================================================================
"The governments in these countries are overstretched, trying to do more
than they are able to do," said Paul Scholte, lead author of the study, visiting professor at ERAIFT-UNESCO in the Democratic Republic of Congo,
and program director at Governance and Sustainable Management of Natural Resources in Comoe' and Tai", two national parks in the Ivory Coast.

"And the reality is that increasing the areas under conservation, in
central Africa, is pushing countries to take on more than they can take
on, when the international community has not given them the resources
necessary to align with the realities on the ground." Many of these
countries, he said, had been self-funding protective measures.

But tourism in those regions has collapsed due to insecurity, reduced
trophy hunting and, more recently, COVID-19, and the international
community has not stepped in to fill that funding gap.

The land in question has been dedicated to conservation for over 50 years, giving researchers decades' worth of data to parse. They also looked at
tourism data, including visitor numbers and revenue.

Their analysis showed that populations of large herbivores, including elephants, giraffes, buffalo and 10 antelope species, declined in six
of the seven parks included in the study, despite the additional land
earmarked for conservation. Tourism in those areas "collapsed," the study authors found. At time same time, livestock numbers increased, indicating
that land set aside for conservation was being used for herders.



========================================================================== Moritz said that political instability and insecurity in central Africa
play a major role in whether conservation areas can effectively protect
animal species.

"Pastoralists in this part of the world are mobile -- they move from one
area to another, and the reason they move is they have to avoid insecurity elsewhere," he said. "When security is restored, pastoralists likely will
go back to where they came from." The seven parks studied are located in
Chad, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic
of Congo. All four countries had, since the early 1970s, set aside a
quarter of their northern savannas for conservation. The conservation
area in those countries is vast, roughly the size of the United Kingdom.

In all but one park, the analysis found, the available funding did not
cover the cost of the rangers that would have been needed to protect the boundaries of the conservation areas. The one park that saw increases
in large herbivore populations, Zakouma National Park in Chad, also had
higher numbers of rangers to enforce the conservation area's boundaries.

The study also found that, starting in the 1980s, livestock herders
brought their own herds to conservation areas of the northern Central
African Republic; livestock farmers have also more recently moved into protected areas of Cameroon. That migration could explain some of the
loss of large herbivores, but two other factors -- decreased rainfall
and low operating budgets -- are more likely causes, Scholte said.

Conservation areas increased around the world following the 2010
Convention on Biological Diversity summit, a meeting of government leaders
from around the world. At the summit, governments internationally agreed
to expand conservation areas to cover 17% of the world's land surface by
2020. The next Convention on Biological Diversity is planned for April
2022; leaders have suggested increasing conservation areas to cover 30%
of the world's land surface.

The goal is noble, Scholte said, but the costs are high: In 2012,
researchers estimated it would cost about $75 billion to manage those
areas across the globe. Without funding to support those goals, most
low-income countries could not succeed, Scholte said.

The findings could indicate that, unless the international community
can increase funding for conservation, existing resources might be most effective in smaller, targeted areas with borders that are easier to
protect, Scholte said.

"We are not talking twice or triple the funding to be effective;
it would require 10, 15 or even 20 times more funding annually
to these parks' budgets," he said. "It's enormous, and we all
know it's not realistic. So, we are saying that we should
realize that, acknowledge it, and concentrate these scarce
resources on areas that are viable and could have a greater effect." ========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Ohio_State_University. Original
written by Laura Arenschield. Note: Content may be edited for style
and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Paul Scholte, Olivier Pays, Saleh Adam, Bertrand Chardonnet, Herve'
Fritz, Jean‐Baptiste Mamang, Herbert H.T. Prins,
Pierre‐Cyril Renaud, Patrick Tadjo, Mark Moritz. Conservation
overstretch and long‐term decline of wildlife and tourism
in the Central African savannas. Conservation Biology, 2021; DOI:
10.1111/cobi.13860 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/11/211115123152.htm

--- up 4 days, 2 hours, 55 minutes
* Origin: -=> Castle Rock BBS <=- Now Husky HPT Powered! (1:317/3)