Spatio-temporal assessment of the relationship between land use land cover changes and human-wildlife conflicts. Case study: Queen Elizabeth National Park

Abstract

Land use land cover change has led to encroachment on the gazetted protected area of Queen Elizabeth National Park hence increasing an interaction between wild animals and people in the surrounding communities. These land use land cover changes are characterized by creation of informal settlements around the conservation areas and conversion of some of the park area into agricultural land. Conservation areas are usually established with the aim of protecting wildlife from human activities and threats in addition to providing scenic and historical sites. The latter leads to the development of tourism. In the management of Queen Elizabeth National Park, human wildlife conflicts are emerging as a significant issue. These conflicts result into severe impacts on communities in form of crop destruction, property damage, loss of livestock, human injury and human killing. The wild animals on the other hard suffer death and injury from the affected persons which may lead to extinction of some species in future. This study therefore evaluated the rate at which the changes in land use and land cover relate to these conflicts. Landsat images of 2001, 2010 and 2020 were used for mapping Land use and land cover changes of Queen Elizabeth national Park using GIS and remote sensing techniques. Unsupervised image classification approach was adopted basing on ISO-cluster means. The land cover change analysis showed that built up increased at a rate of 4.5 %, vegetation reduced at an annual rate of 3.6%, bare land increased at a rate of 1.5% and open water increased at a rate of 1.4%. An interview approach alongside secondary data from the annual reports was used to ascertain the reported cases of human-wildlife conflicts both from the Wildlife authorities and surrounding communities. A general increase in human-wildlife conflicts was noted over the study period and this was mainly attributed to decrease in vegetation and increase in built-up areas around the park.