Wildlife and protected area management
The FAO Forestry Department's work on wildlife and protected area management aims to conserve native faunas together with their natural habitats and to improve the livelihoods of rural communities in developing countries through normative work and field programme activities in collaboration with major international partners. Activities include the preparation, publishing and dissemination of concepts, studies, policy recommendations, guidelines, best practices, and other educational resources; support to regional networks; design and implementation of field projects; the organization of and participation in technical workshops, expert meetings and information events; as well as capacity development and training.
Recently, there has been a focus on the following major topics:
- human-wildlife conflict
- wildlife policies and legislation
- design and management of protected areas
- wildlife conservation and sustainable management
- unsustainable/illegal harvesting and trade in wildlife species for food and non-food purposes (bushmeat)
- impacts of climate change on wildlife and protected areas
- disease dynamics at the human-wildlife-livestock-ecosystem interface
These work areas, however, are not treated separately as there are complex interactions between them. Climate change, for example, is adding additional pressure to already alarming anthropogenic threats such as continued deforestation and conversion of forested habitats to agricultural and other land uses, forest fragmentation and degradation, wildlife habitat encroachment, overgrazing, human-wildlife conflict, and the unregulated, unsustainable exploitation of wildlife and its products (bushmeat). In this way climate change may contribute to the impoverishment of biodiversity and forest genetic resources.
Elephants at Lake Jipe, Kenya