Providing health care to improve community perceptions of protected areas

Abstract

Impoverished communities often turn to illegal extraction of resources from protected areas to alleviate economic pressures or to make monetary gains. Such practices can cause ecological damage and threaten animal populations. These communities also often face a high disease burden and typically do not have access to affordable health care. Here we argue that these two seemingly separate challenges may have a common solution. In particular, providing health care to communities adjacent to protected areas may be an efficient and effective way to reduce the disease burden while also improving local perceptions about protected areas, potentially reducing illegal extraction. We present a case study of a health centre on the edge of Kibale National Park, Uganda. The centre has provided care to c. 7,200 people since 2008 and its outreach programme extends to c. 4,500 schoolchildren each year. Contrasting the provision of health care to other means of improving community perceptions of protected areas suggests that health clinics have potential as a conservation tool in some situations and should be considered in future efforts to manage protected areas.

Perceptions of risk in communities near parks in an African biodiversity hotspot

“…Understanding the nature of local residents' perceived risks will allow conservation managers to adapt strategies when risk mitigation strategies of local residents might threaten protected wildlife. Given the commonality and interaction between livelihood and conservation stressors found in this study, adaptive conservation strategies may also help support local livelihoods, if those strategies mitigate crop raiding, and protect tree cover; but health care provisioning and delivery and access to medicinal plants must also be addressed (Chapman et al 2014).…”

Human–elephant interactions in areas surrounding the Rungwa, Kizigo, and Muhesi Game Reserves, central Tanzania

“…Additionally, people feel unsafe during daily activities such as walking to and from school, collecting firewood and accessing shops (Dickman & Hazzah, 2016; Mayberry et al, 2017). This may affect the socio-economic development of communities (Alcamo et al, 2003; Graham et al, 2010; Barua et al, 2013; Chapman et al, 2015; Røskaft et al, 2015; Fisher, 2016).…”

Movements of scalloped hammerhead sharks (Sphyrna lewini) at Cocos Island, Costa Rica and between oceanic islands in the Eastern Tropical Pacific

“…However, this law has done little to reduce overfishing of sharks in Costa Rican waters, as it only addresses the practice of finning [34], and does not properly address shark overfishing. In addition, Costa Rica is still struggling to eliminate fishing from Cocos Island National Park [33]. Costa Rica recently expanded protection around Cocos Island by creating the Seamounts Marine Management Area (SMMA), which consists of a 9640 km 2 rectangle surrounding Cocos Island National Park [72].…”

“…However, at both Cocos and Malpelo, the creation of MPAs does not appear to have halted a declining trend in the abundance of scalloped hammerheads sharks [23,31,32]. This is thought to be the combined result of intense targeted fishing pressure on sharks outside the 22 km protected area, but is also attributed to illegal fishing within the MPA [32,33]. Although longline fishing effort in the Cocos region targets tuna, sharks constitute a main component of the catch and are often retained as marketable by-catch due to the high value of their fins [34].…”