A Central African Perspective on Delegated Protected Area Management

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a trend for African states to delegate protected area management to private partners. Central Africa is confronted with rapidly declining wildlife populations, with scarce funding and poor incentives as root causes. This raises the question as to whether management delegation can counter this trend. However, our understanding of the efficiency of such partnerships and how they need to be handled is poor. Based on hands-on experiences and external evaluations, we developed best practices of delegated management partnerships in Central Africa. This triggered the development of the here presented Central African perspective, enriching a debate that is biased toward other parts of the continent and dominated by private conservation partners. In particular, we emphasize that in Central Africa, (a) protected areas with delegated management are among the most prestigious ones, albeit with serious management challenges; (b) it is the importance of the protected area that justifies its inclusion in formal development cooperation agreements-the dominant source of funding; (c) lack of legal provisions has been an obstacle to initiate delegated management partnerships for some countries and its wider use in others; (d) increasingly, foundations are being created as implementing national entities; and (e) raising national capacities in handling delegated management should be at the forefront of partnerships. We conclude by highlighting the importance of the new regional best practices that are based on the four stages: identification, preparation, negotiation, and implementation, of which the first three have often been neglected by Central African governments.

Predicting range shifts of African apes under global change scenarios

“…as currently practiced in logging concessions under FSC standards); (5) implement more effective law enforcement in ape ranges by anti‐poaching teams whether inside and outside of PAs, supplemented by environmental education, community development, appropriate tourism programmes and research (IUCN & ICCN (2012); IUCN, 2014; Tranquilli et al., 2012, 2014); and (6) incorporate climate change into land use planning and propose mitigation measures on the conservation agenda for African apes and sympatric wildlife. Public–private partnerships have proven highly effective across the forest and savanna zones, where an NGO or other organization takes on management responsibility for a given site over one or more decades (Scholte et al., 2018).…”

“…Taxon-specific frameworks of environmental and socioeconomic trends (Estrada et al, 2018;Strindberg et al, 2018;Tranquilli et al, 2014) should be considered at all major decisionmaking levels in range countries and abroad to (1) improve the management of suitable areas predicted by our models within PAs; where an NGO or other organization takes on management responsibility for a given site over one or more decades (Scholte et al, 2018).…”

Predicting range shifts of African apes under global change scenarios

“…Taxon-specific frameworks of environmental and socio-economic trends (Estrada et al, 2018;Strindberg et al, 2018;Tranquilli et al, 2014) should be considered at all major decision-making levels in range countries and abroad to (1) improve the management and recovery of degraded habitat in protected areas and off-reserve management to increase resilience, (2) increase the size of protected areas, establish additional protected areas and ensure habitat connectivity, (3) incorporate climate change into land-use planning and propose mitigation measures on the conservation agenda for African apes and sympatric wildlife, and (4) implement more effective law enforcement in ape ranges, supplemented by environmental education, community development, tourism programmes and research (IUCN & ICCN, 2012;IUCN, 2014;Tranquilli et al, 2014Tranquilli et al, , 2012. Public-private partnerships have proven highly effective across the forest and savanna zones, where an NGO or other organisation takes on management responsibility for a given site over one or more decades (Scholte et al, 2018).…”

Conservation overstretch and long‐term decline of wildlife and tourism in the Central African savannas

“…The number of rangers, a proxy for management inputs to tropical wildlife conservation (Bruner et al., 2001), was positively correlated with wild herbivore biomass in Zakouma, but fluctuated in the other parks (Appendix S5). Zakouma stood out due to long‐term (>30 years) financial support from the European Union and a political commitment from the Chadian government (Scholte et al., 2018). In addition to these general drivers, there were site and time‐specific drivers, such as upstream dam construction in Waza (1979) (Scholte et al., 2007) and massive elephant poaching in Zakouma (2006–2009), which stemmed from an overspill of the conflict in neighboring Darfur when conservation efforts were temporarily reduced (Poilecot, 2010).…”