Evaluation of long-term lawenforcementmonitoring in aWest African protected area J ERRY OWUSU AFRIY IE,MICHAE L O. ASARE
JONE S OSE I-MENS A H and PAV L A HEJCMANOV Á
Abstract Law enforcement in protected areas is critical for ensuring long-term conservation and achieving conser- vation objectives. In 2004, patrol-based monitoring of law enforcement was implemented in protected areas in Ghana. Here, we evaluate long-term trends and changes in patrol staff performance, and illegal activities, in the Kogyae Strict Nature Reserve. The assessment was based on ranger pa- trol-based monitoring data collected during January 2006– August 2017. Along the patrol routes, patrol officers recorded all encounters with illegal activities associated with hunting and capturing or harming of animals. Across all years, staff performance was lowest in 2006 as staff learned the system but increased in 2007 and peaked in 2010, the latter as a result of motivation of the patrol staff. After 2011, staff performance decreased, mainly because of the retirement of some patrol staff and insufficient logistical support for successful patrol- ling. Snares were the most commonly recorded indicators of illegal activity. Because their use is silent, poachers using snares are less likely to be detected than poachers using other forms of hunting. Long-term assessment of patrol- based monitoring data provides reliable information on il- legal activities related to wildlife, to enable stakeholders to design effective measures for biodiversity conservation. Our assessment indicates that patrol staff performance in Kogyae is, at least partly, dependent on governmental or external support and incentives, in particular the provision of equipment and transport facilities.
Keywords Ghana, illegal wildlife hunting, monitoring and assessment, patrol staff performance, West Africa, wildlife conservation
Introduction I
llegal activities such as poaching, livestock grazing, and extraction of timber and non-timber forest products are the major threats to biodiversity in protected areas
JERRY OWUSU AFRIYIE and PAVLA HEJCMANOVÁ (Corresponding author, orcid.
org/0000-0001-9547-4302) Faculty of Tropical AgriSciences, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Kamýcká 129, Prague 6–Suchdol CZ 165 00, Czech Republic. E-mail
hejcmanova@ftz.czu.cz
MICHAEL O. ASARE Faculty of Environmental Science, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Prague, Czech Republic
JONESOSEI-MENSAH Wildlife Division of the Forestry Commission, Accra, Ghana
Received 9 August 2019. Revision requested 13 September 2019. Accepted 25 March 2020. First published online 18 May 2021.
(Hilborn et al., 2006; Biggs et al., 2013). The conservation objectives of protected areas in West Africa mostly include the protection of animal populations against commercial or non-commercial subsistence harvesting and protection of ecosystems against the extraction of timber and other resources, to prevent habitat loss. Efforts are needed to achieve these objectives because of the increasing human population of West Africa (International Cooperation and Development, 2016) and, consequently, increasing socio- economic pressures on land and resources. Management of protected areas therefore requires comprehensive ap- proaches involving a clearly defined vision, mission and management plan, effective law enforcement, training programmes for staff, educational and awareness campaigns, and cooperation with local communities. Effective law en- forcement in protected areas results in fewer illegal activities (Fischer et al., 2014;Moore et al., 2017) but, when not imple- mented, biodiversity may decline (Peres & Terborgh, 1995). Assessing law enforcement effectiveness in protected
areas in Africa relies mostly on ranger-collected monitoring data. The effectiveness of law enforcement depends on pa- trol strategies, determined by managers, and on the struc- ture of enforcement incentives (Robinson & Lokina, 2012). The deterrence of illegal activities could, however, be low if detection rates are low and benefits outweigh penalties, and even lower if there is an ambiguous legal framework regard- ing land tenure (e.g. Abbot & Mace, 1999; Nolte, 2016). Optimal ranger patrol strategies differ depending on the
threat. Each threat may be targeted effectively based on the knowledge of past spatial and temporal patterns of illegal activities and an appropriate allocation of ranger patrols (Critchlow et al., 2015). Strategies targeting illegal activities based on predictions of their spatial distribution improve law enforcement efficiency even without any increase in ranger resources (Nyirenda & Chomba, 2012;Plumptre etal., 2014; Critchlow et al., 2017). Approaches using spatial planning toolsmake lawenforcementmore effective, yet are not applied in all protected areas, especially inWest Africa. The main rea- sons seemto be inadequate training in the use of software and the lack ofevaluationofoutcomesfromrangerpatrols. In Ghana, a ranger-based monitoring system was implemented by the Wildlife Division of the Forestry Commission in 2004. It focuses on patrols assigned to monitor illegal activities and mammal populations in pro- tected areas. The system incorporated tools to assess staff performance and the effectiveness of field operations, to as- sist protected area managers in adopting appropriate law
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Oryx, 2021, 55(5), 732–738 © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605320000228
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