Human-Wildlife Interactions and Community Livelihoods

The Case of Villages Around the Selous Game Reserve, Morogoro District, Tanzania

Abstract

In developing nations, particularly in Africa, interactions between humans and animals (HWIs) are widespread as local populations heavily rely on natural resources such as forests, which serve as habitats for flora and fauna. This paper draws from a study which investigated human-wildlife interactions (HWIs) in four villages—Mvuha, Mbwade, Milengwelengwe, and Kisaki Gomero— surrounding the Selous Game Reserve (SGR). A mixed methods approach was adopted to aid data capturing from 312 households and 11 key informants. Spatial analysis was employed to depict land use and land cover changes around the SGR over time due to human influence. The results indicated that HWIs were influenced by changes in water and pasture availability caused by two elements of weather: temperature and rainfall. People in WMA-designated villages complained about the lack of employment and unfair distribution of benefits, whereby the main concern of non-WMA-designated villages was on the need for policy review, with emphasis on the holistic conservation approach. Nonetheless, bush lands have increased in recent decades at the expense of woodland due to the proliferation of human interference. The paper concludes that the intersection of community livelihoods and wildlife ecology was the most common HWI pattern observed. However, typical forms of interaction were often hostile and instigated human-wildlife conflicts.