NAIROBI (AFP) — 'Dysfunctional' African parks are losing species due to poor conservation and pressure on resources, researchers warned in a paper published Tuesday in the African Journal of Ecology.
Africa's national parks, formerly bastions of biodiversity, were losing many of their species, they wrote in a policy piece: "When protection falters".
Africa might have to get used to a being a continent "containing isolated pockets of large mammal diversity living at low population sizes. Just like Europe."
The warning came from Tim Caro of the University of California and the Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute; and Paul Scholte of Leiden University, Netherlands, and the Socotra Conservation and Development Programme in Yemen.
"For years, wildlife managers and biologists in Africa have known that large mammals were disappearing outside reserves," the two ecologists wrote.
Anecdotal evidence suggested a dramatic decline in the populations of many large mammals.
This impression was increasingly supported by qualitative data showing that the numbers of wild animals outside national parks and game reserves had declined sharply over the last 15 years, the paper added.
"But now a raft of studies are showing that we have moved beyond this to the next step: we are losing species from many of Africa's national parks.
The researchers reached the conclusion after studying the falling population of Africa's antelopes, whose movements are easy to track.
Human activities -- spurred by rapid population growth and quest for higher standards of living -- had undermined the efforts of governments and conservationists to protect animals, said the paper.
"Many parks are subject to the ravaging impact of illegal hunters, often local, but sometimes attracted from far away," it added.
"In West-Central Africa, this bushmeat hunting is often the most common factor pressing upon antelope populations.
"In the old days this was for local consumption, now it includes tables in far off cities that, incredibly, extend to London and Paris," said the researchers.
There were also increasing clashes between conservationists and local people who were crossing over into the reserves to make a living there through farming.
In Uganda, five people had died in demonstrations over a conflict between sugar growers in the Mabira Forest Reserve 50 kilometres (30 miles) from Kampala and local conservationists trying to protect local bird species," said the paper.
Elsewhere, the wild animals themselves were in competition for diminishing resources, particularly in the smaller reserves.
At Kenya's world-famous Maasai Mara Game Reserve for example, the sharp drop in the numbers of herbivores, from buffalo to wildebeest, was due to a combination of drought, poaching and the encroachment of farmland, said the study.
Elsewhere however, the decline in the herbivore population could not be blamed on human activities of any kind. In South Africa's well-resourced Kruger National Park for instance, the problem was down to the lack of rainfall.
"We suspect that the documented herbivore population declines represent only the tip of the iceberg," said the paper.
The researchers saw no easy solution to the problem.
The old idea of vast nature reserves far from human populations was still viable in some parts of Africa.
"But it is a conservation approach increasingly outmoded by land-use change, demographics and policy reform," said the paper.
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