Human-wildlife conflicts and local people involvement around Kibale National Park

Abstract

Human-wildlife conflicts (HWC) refer to the negative interactions between local people and wildlife, usually resulting into harm to either or both. This study sought to identify the strategies that could be adopted to increase local people’s involvement in the control of human-wildlife conflicts around Kibale National Park. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected from 50 randomly selected respondents. The findings reveal different types of HWC around Kibale national Park and there are some efforts in place to control them which include trench digging (32%), torch scaring (14%), garden watching (11%) and others. Findings also indicated that some efforts were effective say trench digging and planting unpalatable species, others such as torch scaring were less effective, yet some of the efforts such as use of scare crows were reported not to be effective at all. There were some formsof local people involvement in addressing human-wildlife conflicts around Kibale national park for example the park and local government leaders educated them on how to handle the animals once they cross on to the gardens, the local people were given seedlings of unpalatable crops like coffee to plant at the boundaries to reduce attractiveness of crops/gardens to the animals. Findings also indicate the opportunities to locals, involvement such as the presence of a calling station for them to report animals that have left the park, annual meetings convened by the p[ark management to discuss about HWC, presence of a local conservation based organization for easy raising of people’s voices. The most frequently experienced challenges for locals’ involvement in the control of human-wildlife conflict include late or no compensation (9.4%), late or no response to reports (15%), selfish interests from some locals (2.4%). The possible improvements suggested by the local people included enhancing compensation (13.8%), putting in practice the ideas from locals (20%), ensuring timely response from the park/rangers (11.5%), and subsidizing locals so that they can afford bee keeping (12.6%). A key recommendation is that the locals should be sensitized about the importance of involvement in HWC control in collaboration with other bodies like park management