Wildlife management, land-use and conflicts

Abstract

ABSTRACT The paper analyses the conflict between wildlife conservation and its accompanying land-use in an East African context. In the model there are two agents. First, there is an agency managing the wildlife and the habitat of the wildlife, which is referred to as parkland. On the other hand, there is the group of agro-pastoralists living in the vicinity of the wildlife habitat, whose land-use is referred to as rangelands. The parkland is used for tourism production and hunting, while the rangelands are used for agro-pastoral production. Both agents will find it beneficial to expand their land-use, so there is a land-use conflict. This is analysed in two steps. First, social optimality is studied; then we study the utilization of the wildlife and its accompanying land-use when there is no unified resource policy and the park agency follows its self-interest. The effects on the two different management schemes of changing economic conditions, such as the recommendations of the CITES convention and a programme subsidizing agro-pastoral production, are discussed.