Local Communities Participation in Biodiversity Conservation: A Study of Gashaka Gumti National Park, Taraba State, Nigeria

Kanati Madaki, - (2022) Local Communities Participation in Biodiversity Conservation: A Study of Gashaka Gumti National Park, Taraba State, Nigeria. PhD thesis, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak.

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Abstract

Globally, biodiversity conservation is receiving attention to stem the rapid loss of wildlife and habitat. The creation of National Parks is to curtail and eliminate all forms of human interferences and their activities, which are inimical to the existence of wildlife and their habitats. Although Gashaka Gumti National Park is to preserve, protect and enhance biodiversity and livelihood, the impact is below expectation. The present study has demonstrated that community participation and tourism development in the park cannot be overlooked in an attempt to capitalize on the strengths, minimize the weakness, maximize opportunity, and minimize threats in the effort to conserve wildlife and their habitats in Gashaka Gumti National Park. The application of Binary logistic regression on a sample of 188 households is used to identify significant factors that are likely to encourage local community participation and support of tourism development. Based on the fitted model for maximizing opportunity, Enter Model identified community conservative initiative to be significant while the Forward selection model found Support Tourism Development and Community Participation significant. Moreover, the Backwards selection method found Support for Tourism Development, Helping to Local Community; Tourism Bring Job opportunities, and Community Conservation initiatives are the key factors. However, based on Akaike’s Information Criterion (AIC), the backward stepwise selection method offered the best model fitting with log-likelihood statistic (232.997). Based on the prediction of the likelihood of maximizing or capitalizing the strength, The Enter method and the Backward Selection method found that Community Support for Tourism Development; Worsen Livelihood; Community Participates in park management policy, and Tourism development are key contributors, but the Forward Stepwise method found that Tourism Development to be insignificant. Overall, The Enter method produced the best model iv fitting for the outcome of maximizing strengths per the Akaike’s Information Criterion (AIC) value (216. 370) measured by log-likelihood statistic and the number of significant independent variables in the model. Meanwhile, the Likelihood of Minimizing Weakness based on the three binary logistic methods showed that the Promotion of local products and Support for community-based conservation is crucial, with Enter selection method offering the best model fitting given the Akaike’s Information Criterion (AIC) value (228.557). Similarly, the Enter method produced the best model fitting for minimizing threats to Gashaka Gumti National Park as Tourism Development Worsen Community Cultural Heritage is significant in the model based on the Akaike’s Information Criterion (AIC) values (231.667). The result of community participation in park management allows park managers to link local community involvement and tourism development activities to achieve conservation goals through participatory natural resources management. This understanding promotes equitable allocation of responsibilities and benefits from tourism development. Thus, it can be concluded that the inclusion of the local community in the management of Gashaka Gumti National Park could enhance the status of the park more than the protectionist and pure conservation approach.

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