Wildlife Management Areas in Wildlife

Keywords:

wildlife; management; areas;

Abstract:

Background
In December 2006 the Institute of Resource Assessment (IRA) was contracted by the Tanzania Programme Office of the WWF to undertake an assessment and evaluation of wildlife management areas (WMAs) in the country. The main objectives of this assignment were to:
• Evaluate the implementation of the process to establish a WMA;
• Evaluate the design of the pilot phase for the WMA looking at the extent to which the design has facilitated the implementation of WMAs, and
• Identify factors that can enhance sustainability of WMAs.

The evaluation was done in response to the WMA Regulations that require the pilot WMA to be assessed after the lapse of 36 months since the Regulations come to force. The assessment and evaluation aims to explore lessons learnt in order to provide a road map for WMA implementation in Tanzania.

Methodology
This assignment involved assessment and evaluation of the 16 pilot WMAs in Tanzania.
The assessment and evaluation process covered ecological, economic, and sociological aspects related to the pilot WMAs. The combination of these aspects necessitates the use of a variety of approaches in the collection of both primary and secondary information from the pilot WMAs.

Before visiting the respective WMAs, the Review Team consulted various stakeholders at the national, regional and district levels, where it conducted interviews and discussed with the appropriate officials with the purpose of getting their views about the importance, capacity, and feasibility of the WMA concept. Also, the team consulted with the various donors for the respective WMAs to collect and assess data and information related to the facilitation process for the WMAs. Moreover, issues related to performance, strength, weaknesses and opportunities of each WMA and the WMA establishment process as stipulated in the WMA Guidelines were explored. The discussions with district officials enabled the team to assess and evaluate the technical, administrative, community involvement and management structures to each of the WMAs.

Lessons Learned
From the analysis and discussion of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to the WMA design and implementation process, the team is able to draw up at least nine major lessons, as follows:
• WMA is a viable economic and wildlife conservation enterprise outside wildlife protected areas, and it is worth investing on it.

• The process of establishing WMAs is long and cumbersome. This does in many ways not only discourage communities by the resultant cost and bureaucratic complexity, but also lead to successful WMAs being formed only in areas with significant external support. The capital-intensive nature of activities like land use planning, natural resource management zoning, numerous consultative meetings in WMAs with many villages, and patrols make implementation of the WMA concept difficult indeed without donor support. Hence, continued facilitation is imperative in the whole process of establishment of WMAs. Specifically:

o WD should endeavour to continue sensitizing, educating and training communities on the WMA Regulations and Guidelines, and seek collaboration of other relevant sector ministries in order to speed up the process of developing WMAs.
o WD should make more user friendly manuals, and revise the existing WMA Regulations, guidelines and Manuals (as identified in the analysis of the findings of the WMA Assessment Report), to enable communities better understand the WMA development process.
o WD should strive to reduce WMA development costs by shortening the process of preparing Resource Zone Management Plan (RZMP) and working with the Ministry of Lands and Human Settlement Development (MLHSD) to shorten the process of undertaking VLUP.
o WD should liaise with MLHSD to ensure that potential villages to establish WMAs are included in the programme to implement the Strategic Plan for Implementation of Land Laws (SPILL).

• Recent history of conflict over land alienation for parks and game reserves has contributed substantially to the lack of progress on the establishment of WMAs in areas such as Tarime and Loliondo. WD should continue sensitizing and educate villagers on WPT objectives with regard to development of WMAs, to remove perceived fears of losing their land.
• Capacity building is the main issue emerging after the WMAs have attained an AA status and resource User Rights. All such WMAs do not have business and strategic plans to manage the WMAs and run business. It is recommended that PMO-RALG should make concerted efforts to assist WMAs by recruiting qualified and adequate personnel at the district councils. Also, WD should continue to seek funding for implementation of the training needs assessment report for WMAs, and make the report available to all stakeholders.

• Poor governance with little transparency and accountability is the general condition of many of the local level institutions. In some villages CBOs have distanced themselves too much from the Village Councils and hence also from the local communities. On the other hand, some of the Village Councils lack transparency in income and expenditures. PMO-RALG should ensure that CBOs/AAs adhere to their constitutions and financial regulations
• In villages with rich wildlife and/or potential for investors there are strong anti-WMA establishment sentiments often fostered by individual investors and conflicting interests from some NGOs. Innovative and flexible ways need to be devised by facilitators to raise awareness among the local communities and promote the WMA option as a more attractive and viable economic venture.
• Benefit sharing between the Central Government and the local communities, and between villages with different land sizes contributed to the WMAs or with different resource bases, is still not so well defined.
• In harmonising resource management, the WMA Regulations provide for the compliance of other laws in the utilisation of other resources in a WMA, such as forests, beekeeping activities, fisheries and mining. There is a need therefore to conserve all natural resources in a holistic approach, while observing the respective sectoral laws. WD should strengthen the training offered at Likuyu Sekamaganga Community-based Training Centre and Pansiasi Wildlife Training Institute in order to make sure that they integrate other natural resources in their training curricula.
• WMAs are not homogeneous. There are different socio-economic conditions and cultural lines within and between WMAs that need to be properly understood as they each demand different approaches to planning.
• While the Environmental Management Act (EMA, 2004) and EIA Regulations of 2005 and WMA Regulations of 2003 require EIAs fro all development projects in ecologically sensitive areas, there is low awareness at village/WMA levels.

Best Practices

Although none of the 16 pilot WMAs had been operational by the time of this Evaluation, there are a few best practices that can be documented, as follows:

• In the WMAs that had earlier on participated in CBC programmes/projects around the SGR, presence of demonstrable benefits to communities in the form of legal access to game meat and revenue derived from sale of quotas in WMAs has given an extra impetus to the process of establishing the WMAs. So has been the case in areas where individual villages had benefited from private tourist hunting and photographic safari companies that had entered into local agreements to provide development support to adjacent villages as in Western Serengeti (e.g. Robanda village in Ikona). WMAs such as the Pawaga-Idodi WMA in Iringa District managed by the MBOMIPA association, have been able to earn income by selling wildlife quotas to resident hunters.

• Commitment at the macro or meso level is crucial for establishing vibrant links between the micro and the macro. Wildlife Division has involved local government authorities in planning and implementation of WMA programmes. In this case local government’s commitment is demonstrated through direct participation and through the institutionalization of the Wildlife Division /Local Government relationship. Most of WMA interventions have been scaled up to the meso level vis-à-vis the District Strategic Action Plans so as to ensure conformity and avoid duplication of activities. Meso level institutions, e.g. the DGO, DCDO, etc., have also done the district level training, received feedback and given out recommendations for improvement. This relationship needs to be enhanced and promoted.

• The role of NGOs as facilitators of the WMA process is provided for under regulation 77 of the WMA Regulations. NGOs like Africare, World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS), African Wildlife Foundation (AWF), have successfully facilitated the establishment of WMAs using this regulation. The eight (8) WMAs that have acquired user rights were facilitated by Africare, WWF, FZS and AWF.

The Way Forward

The following recommendations for improving the WMA process focus on the three objectives of this assignment, as follows:

Recommendations for Improved Implementation of the Process to Establish a WMA
• In order to ensure that the Wildlife Policy (1998), WMA Guidelines (2002) and Regulations (2004) are supported by a principal legislation, it is recommended that the new Wildlife Act be finalised as soon as possible.

• WD should continue to emphasize the role of NGOs as facilitators and capacity builders as stipulated in the WPT and to ensure that ownership of the WMA remains to be vested in local communities.

• In order to align the roles of NGOs and the private sector with the part that provides for their approval, Regulation 77 should be moved and put just after Regulation 32.

• WD should continue to provide sensitization; education and training on WPT and WMA Regulations to such areas, so as to improve governance hence remove tensions and create a good atmosphere for the entities to work in harmony.

• In order to reduce the wildlife-human conflicts WD shall include the following strategies with a view to addressing the problem:

o Incorporating problem animals that are shot annually into hunting quota thus deriving greater economic benefit to the villagers, using regulations 50 and 53 of the WMA Regulations;
o Explore and make use of mechanical and electrical deterrents, which are non lethal; and
o Sensitizing and educating villagers on the economic value of wildlife.

Recommendations for the Design of the Pilot Phase for the WMA

• As an exit strategy, WD should gradually withdraw its powers from WMA management by introducing user friendly versions of standards, guidelines of all important activities such as contracting experts, negotiations, resource use, while remaining with the roles of custodianship of wildlife, regulation and monitoring.

• WD should endeavour to advice WMAs actors and villagers on the complexity of identifying genuine potential investors, given its experience in the tourist hunting industry.

• WD should educate and provide capacity to AAs to enable them to organise themselves to form a consortium in order to facilitate the nomination of two members to represent them in the Block Allocation Advisory Committee, as per regulation 55.

• In order to reduce bureaucracy and accelerate the process of establishing WMAs, applications by CBOs for AA status, User Rights and hunting blocks should be combined.

• WD should inform AAs the benefit sharing ratio that will apply to revenue collected from the WMA, as well as when there is a change to the formula, as approved by the Treasury.

• Villages forming a WMA should continue to divide revenue equally amongst themselves as per Regulation 73.

• Revenue accrued from a tented camp or hotel situated on village land outside the WMA could be collected and kept by the respective village, where the facility is situated.

Recommendations for Enhanced Sustainability of WMAs
• Put in place a flexible post-User Rights capacity building programme, based on local needs assessments of the AAs and the communities in general, as these institutions are weak in human capital; lacking in both technical capacity and skill to take off and later manage their resources and operate successfully.

• In order to clearly define the role of facilitators in this respect a Facilitators Meeting should be organized on this issue by the Wildlife Division.

• WD should conduct a stakeholders meeting to disseminate the results of WMA Assessment Report, elaborate on the role of facilitation of WMA development process by NGOs and the private sector.

• WD should continue to emphasize the role of NGOs as facilitators and capacity builders to ensure that ownership of the WMA remains to be vested in villages that own the land, through the CBOs/AAs.

• Opportunities should be created for local communities to exercise and practice the skills obtained to alleviate poverty at the household level in simple, cheap and sustainable ways.

• Strengthen the WMA Regulations by clarifying the issue of benefit-sharing and granting community’s greater control over wildlife utilization activities such as tourist hunting and photo tourism.

• Instead of relying solely on the resources of the donors, the WD should take a more pro-active role in the facilitation and roll-out of WMAs. The current initiatives of allocating a percentage of the tourist hunting fees to the WMA formation process are appreciable. However, other possible avenues of funding need to be explored. Districts that have or are going to establish WMAs should include WMA development in their District Development Plans, also and reflect this in their annual budgets. Also, the MNRT should prepare a proposal for funding of WMA in order to secure funds for districts which will engage in development of WMAs, since they contribute to the implementation of MKUKUTA and MKURABITA.

• There should be awareness raising for local communities and investors on the need for EIAs for development projects invested in WMAs.

• In order to reduce the wildlife-human conflicts WD shall include the following strategies with a view to addressing the problem:

o Incorporating problem animals that are shot annually into hunting quota thus deriving greater economic benefit to the villagers, using regulations 50 and 53 of the WMA Regulations;
o Explore and make use of mechanical and electrical deterrents, which are non lethal; and
o Sensitizing and educating villagers on the economic value of wildlife.