Biodiversity Conservation of National Parks and Nature-protected Areas in West Africa: The Case of Kainji National Park, Nigeria

Abstract

Due to rising global warming and climate change, biodiversity protection has become a critical ecological concern. The rich biodiversity zones are under threat and are deteriorating, necessitating national, regional, and provincial efforts to safeguard these natural areas. The effective conservation of National Parks and Nature-protected Areas helps to improve biodiversity conservation, forest, and urban air quality. The continuous encroachment and abuse of these protected areas have degraded the ecosystem over time. While exploring the geophysical ecology and biodiversity conservation of these areas in West Africa, Kainji National Park was selected for this study because of its notable location, naturalness, rich habitat diversity, topographic uniqueness, and landmass. The conservation of national parks and nature-protected areas is a cornerstone of biodiversity conservation globally. This study is aimed at the target of United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 13, 2030- Climate Action, targeted at taking urgent action towards combating climate change and its impacts. The study captures both flora and fauna that are dominant in the study area. The 15 identified tree species were selected from over 30 species with 563,500,000 (an average of 3,700,000 in each sample frame) trees for every tree species/type with a total of 63% tree green canopy cover. The study areas divided into three zones were randomly sampled within a stratum of 25x25km frames divided into 150 sample frames for proper analyses using the i-Tree Eco v6.0.23. The following microclimatic data were captured and analyzed; photosynthetically active radiation, rain/precipitation, temperature, transpiration, evaporation, water intercepted by trees, avoided a runoff by trees, potential evaporation by trees, isoprene and monoterpene by trees. This study also further discusses the tree benefits of a green, low carbon, and sustainable environment within the context of biodiversity conservation considering carbon storage, carbon sequestration, hydrology effects, pollution removal, oxygen production, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). There is a quick need for remotely-sensed information about the protected areas at regular intervals and government policies must be strict against illegal poaching, logging activities and other hazardous human impacts.

Research on Ecological Compensation of National Parks Based on Tourism Concession Mechanism

“…PPSNPS was established in 2016. It is one of five national park system pilots in China [24]. PPSNPS is located in the southwest of the Shennongjia Forest District in Hubei Province.…”

Construction of a National Trail Research Framework under a Natural Protected Area System

“…The general office of the central committee of the communist party of China in 2017 and the General Office of the State Council issued the National Parks System Overall Scheme and printed and distributed the Guidelines on Establishing a System of Protected Natural Areas with National Parks as the Main Body in 2019. Thus, the Chinese nature reserve system will be in line with international standards, and the main body of natural protection will shift from a nature reserve to a national park [19].…”

“…Constructing a classified and graded system of natural protected areas is ideal for many countries with vast territories and diversified natural resources. Although the current classification standards of various types of natural protected areas are simple, China is facing a transition period and has not yet formed a perfect system of natural protected areas in terms of management systems and protection policies [19,20].…”

Vacancy analysis and layout optimization of Changdao natural protected area from the perspective of multi-objective collaboration

“…Moreover, most of the existing studies are policy-oriented guidance, instead of detailed optimization scheme for spatial layout. China is promoting the integration and optimization of protected natural areas across the country, and relevant studies have emerged, mainly covering: (1) classification system and selection index system of protected areas (Gao et al, 2019;Hou et al, 2019;Qu et al, 2019;Chen and Jiao, 2020;Ouyang et al, 2020;Tang et al, 2020a;Zhao et al, 2020); (2) basic ecological theory of integrated optimization of protected areas (Tang and Luan, 2017;He and Su, 2019;Lin and Zhou, 2019;Jiang et al, 2021;Tang, 2021);…”