Impacts of human activities on the conservation of igando- igawa wildlife corridor in Njombe and Mbarali districts, Tanzania .

Abstract

Wildlife corridors are features connecting two or more otherwise isolated patches of habitat and are among the areas of land affected by human activities. Corridors are much affected because in most cases they are not legally protected. This study assessed the impacts of human activities on the conservation of Igando-Igawa wildlife corridor in Mbarali and Njombe Districts. Specifically, the study determined socio-economic and cultural activities, the level of human disturbances to habitat as well as identifying wildlife using the corridor. A cross-sectional sampling design was employed where five villages were purposively selected for questionnaire based interviews (QBI) and focus group discussions. A total of 120 respondents were randomly selected for QBI. Disturbances were assessed by field survey in which five transects with 43 plots were located systematically in the entire corridor. SPSS package was employed for analysing socio- economic and cultural data. The excel computer programme was used to analyse resource utilisation pressure gradient. Results revealed various human activities in the corridor, namely; cultivation, pastoralism, firewood collection, poles/withies harvesting, charcoal making, hunting and logging/lumbering. Wildfires, rituals and collection of medicinal plants were other activities affecting the corridor. The use of vegetation resources before conservation begun in 2005/06 was significantly high (p = 0.001, t = 3.07). Tree resources were intensively extracted whereby 61.9 % were harvested. However there was a significant reduction in harvesting tree resources (p = 0.0001, t = 7.11) after conservation activities begun in 2005/2006. During the study, the corridor was harbouring at least 27 species of mammals, 20 of birds and eight families of herps. The corridor’s ecological status had shown significant improvement in terms of wildlife and vegetations. Nevertheless, the study recommends special programmes to alleviate local community poverty around the corridor. Further studies on socio-economic and ecological issues are also suggested.