Park-People Relations And Their Contribution To Community Livelihoods: A Case Of Kilimanjaro National Park, Tanzania

ABSTRACT

The study assessed park-people relations and their contribution in community livelihoods at KINAPA and its surrounding communities. The specific objectives of the study were to investigate park-people relations, to examine the factors influencing the park-people relations at KINAPA and to examine contribution of the park to the livelihoods of communities adjacent to the Kilimanjaro National Park. A sample of 99 respondents were selected from Foo and Wari villages and involved in the study, four tourism officers, one village executive officers from each village and one village chairperson from each village. Data collection methods included survey, structured interview and focus group discussion and the analysis involved descriptive statistics of means, percentage and frequencies.

It was found that community park-people relations ranged from ―poor to very poor‖ (62.6%) and most interviewees who were women (60.6%) with primary level of education rated park-people relations from ―bad to very bad‖ (74.4%). Results further more show that KINAPA staff reported park-people relations as ―moderate‖.

Park-people relations influenced by crop damage due to wildlife was found to be ―very significant‖ (67.9%), prohibition of villagers to harvest forest products (71.7%) ―very significantly‖ and lack of participation in the choice of development projects. Respondents 68.6% show that park has failed to improve their livelihood as they rated from ―low to very low‖. They neither own any asset nor use forest products including bee keeping and hunting. The study recommends TANAPA to involve villagers in planning and decision making on park development projects and provide them with compensation in conservation cost to improve park-people relations.