Assessing community perceptions about the contributions and impacts of Wildlife tourism to rural livelihoods: Wildlife management areas perspective
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Date
2022
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Tanzania Journal of Forestry and Nature Conservation
Abstract
Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) refer
to protected areas in a village land, set aside
for conservation of wildlife and tourism
activities. Existing studies on WMAs have
focused more on the establishment,
governance and conservation consequences
of WMAs. Relatively few studies have been
conducted on the contributions of wildlife
tourism from WMAs perspectives to rural
livelihoods in Tanzania. The objective of this
study was to assess community perceptions
about the contributions of wildlife tourism
and conservation to livelihoods of
communities residing in WMA, using Ikona
and Makao WMAs as a case study. Crosstabs
analysis using Chi-square ( 2 ) was applied to
analyse data collected using questionnaires.
Overall, the findings indicate that most
people (74.1%) are proud of their villages
being in WMA, (59.8%) are aware of
tourism activities in their WMA, (71.5%)
accept wildlife conservation and (33.6%)
agree that WMA increases livelihood
options. Overall, the findings indicate that
wildlife tourism contributes to local peoples’
livelihoods at a community level but not at a
household level. The study recommends
WMA authorities to integrate local
communities at a household level in all facets
of wildlife tourism in WMAs so as to
enhance the contribution of WMAs and
wildlife tourism to sustainable livelihoods.
Description
Journal Article
Keywords
Community Perceptions, Conservation, Ikona, Livelihoods, Makao, Tanzania, Wildlife Management Areas (WMA), Wildlife Tourism.