Entirety | PANORAMA

Review phase

Bushmeat Hunting and Resource Extraction are a Constant Threat to Biodiversity

Rangers arresting a poacher

Colin Chapman

The bushmeat trade is a large industry that is decimating many wildlife populations, even those in protected areas. It is estimated that up to 4 million tonnes of bushmeat are extracted each year from Central Africa alone ( the weight of ~5.7 million cattle). For the people’s perspective the resources from parks allow them to feed their families and raise money to send children to school.

We have been greatly aided by the Uganda Wildlife Authority that protects the part, monitors illegal encroachment and engages in revenue sharing and outreach to help local people. The mission statement of the Uganda Wildlife Authority is to “To conserve, economically develop and sustainably manage the wildlife and protected areas of Uganda in partnership with neighboring communities and other stakeholders for the benefit of the people of Uganda and the global community.”

Through the hard work of a Ugandan Wildlife Authority, we have been able to analyze data on the poaching level and understand the economic pressures causing increased activities and which conservation actions are effective at decreasing these activities. We have learned that our joint efforts have led to forest recovery the growth of wildlife populations in the park

Monitoring

Review phase

Health Care is a Pressing Need That Can be Affordably Provided to Many Around Parks

In the case of tropical health, most suffering is NOT caused by a lack of effective drugs or technology, rather it is due to the simple but critical lack of accessibility to health knowledge and services. In Uganda alone, 30% of all deaths among children between the ages of 2 and 4 are caused by malaria, a disease that could be easily treated or prevented, and 26% of children under the age of 5 are malnourished. These trends are most severe in remote regions where health services and education are extremely limited. Remote areas are also often home to protected areas for wildlife. Through local clinics or mobile clinics, it is possible to provide critical health services to many people at a small cost per individual. The number of people receiving benefits are many times greater than other types of revenue sharing, such as ecotourism.

The Uganda Wildlife Authority, manage national parks, and they have enabled our outreach by providing a ranger to talk to the communities whenever the mobile clinic is in actions. They have also provided the driver. The Ministry of Health has provided us up to 3 local nurses to accompany the mobile clinic. Furthermore, the Ministry provides many drugs for free, including medicine for HIV, deworming, and vaccinations. The vaccinations will be particularly important this coming year to beat back COVID.

Through the hard work of a Ugandan student, we demonstrated that by providing health care through our mobile clinic, we can improve how the local people perceive the park - improving parks-people relationships. Long-term monitoring of wildlife populations show that this corresponds to increases in wildlife populations.

Monitoring

Review phase

Education, awareness, and traditional knowledge documentation

Local Community children's education

Karim Omar

Local Community children's awarness

Karim Omar

Training Stakeholders

Karim Omar

Training Stakeholders 2

Karim Omar

Education for children's

Karim Omar

Over the past 10 years, we have focused on assessing the conservation status of endemic species and their rehabilitation in the wild. We have made a great effort to preserve it and plan for its sustainability. The most important thing that my team and I reached is that the surrounding community, users of resources, researchers, and decision-makers, whether in the site or in the government away from the place, the private sector, and students even the public can destroy everything we built during the previous years as a result of their ignorance of what we work and its importance to us and them. Dissemination of information is an external protection shield to ensure the sustainability of activities on the site. Continuous training and awareness activities should be in the target area and throughout the country in order to avoid destruction due to ignorance. Also, not documenting the traditional knowledge inherited by the local community is extremely dangerous and its loss is a waste of wealth that will cost the state and the world huge sums to discover again.

Education, awareness, and documentation, could reduce the current and future pressures and reduce the impact and the cost of recovery.

The most important factor for the success of training and awareness programs is the appropriate choice of the recipient, who preferably has contact, whether from close or from afar, with the natural resource.

Involving the community in planning and implementing conservation programs and agreeing on the sustainability and conservation of the natural resource consolidates the principle of partnership and trust and facilitates the process of documenting their knowledge.

Share with the community all your next steps and challenges and hear from them their opinions and suggestions, even if they are simple from your point of view.

Teach children in the region to understand the next generation.

Follow-up and engagement of trainees after training and awareness is very useful and works to establish and implant information within them.

Educate stakeholders about the importance of your role for their future and share the decision with them.

Project about capacity building and awarness

Solar lightning kits

Combines solar solution to provide ligth and access to power and charge phones

Solar kits

Financial resources

Logistics

Improve life in rural commnities

Niassa biogas project

Build partnership to implement projects in biogas in niassa reserve and other reserves in Mozambique

Finance

Logistic

Capacity building

Sustainable development

Indigenous Ecological Knowledge

Tapping into traditional knowledge and drawing upon the rich cultural traditions and biological heritage of local communities gives them a sense of pride in their heritage and enhances conservation outcomes. Documentation of the PBR by Sükhai village was an excellent entry point for enhanced conservation.

The PBRs prepared for the three villages of Sukhai, Kivikhu and Ghukhuyi document the folklore, traditional knowledge, ecology, biodiversity and cultural practices of the locals and help codify the oral knowledge of the communities.

Over time traditional knowledge has eroded and the folklore and practices that supported the wise use of their landscapes are being lost. The elders were satisfied with the documentation of their traditional and cultural indigenous knowledge in the People’s Biodiversity Registers (PBRs).

Local

Local Champions

Ivan (Leftmost)- Local Champion leading the conservation efforts

Siddharth Edake

Having local champions is key to give thrust to the initiative & for the communities to own it. This also leads to rapid spread of such conservation successes & sustained motivation. Several deliberations were held initially with the communities of the three pilot villages in order to increase awareness about the impending ecological threat & the advantages of integrated approaches at the community & stakeholder level to manage the resources collectively and efficiently. During these deliberations, local champions were identified from each village. Though many interested individuals came forward, it was Mr Ivan Jimo in Sukhai village, Mr K. Vikuto Zhimomi in Ghukhuyi village and Mr Kakishe Muru and Mr Bokato Muru who were in constant touch with us & took keen interest in what the project had to offer and most importantly understood the reasons behind it. We put them in touch with like minded leaders of the communities carrying out similar conservation activities in NorthEast India. There was transfer of knowledge when we invited other community leaders to the CCA as well as organised the travel of our local champions to witness other successfull case studies. We have also involved them on several online as well as offline platforms where they could speak about their conservation initiatives.

In order to support and motivate them, we continuosly had an open communication with them to tackle all the challenges on the way. Continuous motivation from our side was one of the enabling factor that lead to the local champions mobilising community members and explaining concepts & problems in simple ways giving easy to understand examples that people relate to.

The involvement of communities, through local champions and stimulating local initiatives, has been key for successful mainstreaming of nature in sustainable development and enhanced awareness of sustainability.

Based on all this exposure the local champions as a part of their own grasroot organisation and without TERI's help has submitted their first independent proposal to the UNDP and Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change of India funded project titled 'Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures(OECMs) initiatives geared towards helping these communities.

Local

Strengthening the science-policy interface for socially inclusive governance

Workshop with decision-makers to analyze the applicability and usability of research tools and other outcomes within the protected area

UOC team

The elaboration of a plan for creating understanding and collaboration between researchers and decision-makers was a necessary tool to promote that scientific knowledge can have impacts on the policy domain. This plan entailed the following actions:

Face-to-face or online meetings to formally introduce the research project to the protected area decision-makers and managers while using media (e.g., radio and press), and developing seminars to inform local residents and other stakeholders about the project;
Invitation to decision-makers and managers to be involved in the project activities (e.g. local knowledge alliance, film and meetings);
Tailoring the research activities to the decision-makers agenda to facilitate their participation;
Organization of regular meetings, webinars and newsletters in local languages to inform about the project advances and findings;
Development of workshops with decision-makers to analyze the applicability and usability of resulting tools and other research outcomes within the protected area;
Dissemination of research reports in local language before academic article publications to validate the results;
Writing posts in the national park’s blog and other related websites to disseminate research findings within the protected area channels.

Conducted key-informant interviews with staff from the Sierra de Guadarrama National Park to identify the interests and needs of decision-makers and align our research activities;
Involved key staff from the National Park with the capacity to promote institutional changes and decisions to facilitate that our scientific insights might reach impacts on the management setting;
Organized a workshop with decision-makers to evaluate research tools in terms of applicability in the management cycle in order to facilitate their use by them.

An early exploration of the management and decision-making setting is relevant to plan for and develop solution-oriented research that can be implemented within the management cycle;
Periodical meetings between researchers and decision-makers help scientists gain awareness of the variety of directions in which their research can impact the policy domain, and decision-makers gain access to the best available evidence to make decisions. This is crucial to align research to the decision-makers' needs and facilitate the use of science in the management setting;
Producing scientific outcomes that are translatable into real outcomes in the management can motivate decision-makers to participate in the research;
Writing policy reports to introduce scientific insights into the native language facilitates the use of scientific information by decision-makers;
Planning the research activities so that overwhelming decision-makers with multiple requests is avoided.

Local

Fact Sheet: Promoting inclusive conservation in protected areas

Stakeholder and community engagement

A broad range of government agencies, non-government organisations and community groups were engaged with during the phase-out program. As past land managers hadn’t engaged with the farming community regarding management of the licensed areas, much time was spent ‘around the kitchen table’ drinking tea with license holders and listening to their stories and history of the land. It soon became clear that they had a love of the River Red Gum Forest and the special plants and animals that lived there. It was common for farmers to reminisce about their encounters with Wedge Tailed Eagles, Platypus or the big Murray Cod living by their water pump.

A dedicated Grazing Officer was assigned to Warby-Ovens National Park, supported by a small team that operated across the River Red Gum parks
A broad range of community groups, Traditional Owners and non-government organisations supported the removal of grazing for ecological reasons and wanted increased public access to the river frontage.

Development of relationships with graziers through acknowledging their connection to the land was essential to gain their acceptance of the park’s creation.
Farmers didn’t always have access to on-line information or ability to respond to emails. Face-to-face communication and delivery of information proved invaluable.