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 andanimals (HWIs) are widespread as local populations heavily rely on naturalresources such as forests, which serve as habitats for flora and fauna. This paperdraws from a study which investigated human-wildlife interactions (HWIs) infour villages—Mvuha, Mbwade, Milengwelengwe, and Kisaki Gomero—surrounding the Selous Game Reserve (SGR). A mixed methods approach wasadopted to aid data capturing from 312 households and 11 key informants.Spatial analysis was employed to depict land use and land cover changes aroundthe SGR over time due to human influence. The results indicated that HWIs wereinfluenced by changes in water and pasture availability caused by two elementsof weather: temperature and rainfall. People in WMA-designated villagescomplained about the lack of employment and unfair distribution of benefits,whereby the main concern of non-WMA-designated villages was on the need forpolicy review, with emphasis on the holistic conservation approach. Nonetheless,bush lands have increased in recent decades at the expense of woodland due tothe proliferation of human interference. The paper concludes that theintersection of community livelihoods and wildlife ecology was the most commonHWI pattern observed. However, typical forms of interaction were often hostileand instigated human-wildlife conflicts.