Assessment of human wildlife interactions, benefits attained and challenges faced by communities bordering Kibale National Park

Abstract

The growing population, expansive development, global climate change and other environmental aspects put people and wildlife in competition for scarce resources and hence, unavoidable interactions of humans with animals in different environmental settings. The purpose of this study was to assess the human wildlife interactions, benefits and challenges faced by communities bordering Kibale national park. Data was collected using key informant interviews and structured questionnaires. 10 key informants and 130 respondents from Kanyawara parish were interviewed. The results showed that majority of the humans encounter the wild animals and the areas or points of interactions were mainly the gardens (70%), at home (29.2%) and at the well (9.3%). Major animals encountered were elephants (97.7%), baboons (69.2%) and black and white colobus monkeys (7.7%). In addition to that results also showed that challenges like crop raiding (81.5%), injuries (4.6%) from animal attacks, disease spread (14.6%), school dropout (1.5%) and psychological torture (0.8%) were faced by the Kanyawara communities. Different measures were applied to reduce the negative impacts of animal presence like hitting jerry cans (33.8%), setting up fires (12.3%), calling rangers (13.8%) and guarding gardens (7.7%). The community could however adopt the use of light and noise in various forms as immediate measures to counter problem animal incidences. Revenue sharing and compensation initiatives should consider the people in the hotspots as beneficiaries of the lion’s share due to the magnitude of the negative impact of the animal presence on their livelihood. Fencing of the park boundaries as suggested by the communities could be done so as to prevent animals from crossing to the community land. Further studies should be done on the social implications of the animal presence in local communities. These include school dropout rate, mental health and family feuds