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Community Forestry as Perceived by Local People Around Cross River National Park, Nigeria

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Abstract

The prior identification of local people’s preferences for conservation-development projects will help gear nature-conservation strategies toward the needs of different groups of local people. This will help policy-makers in designing a more acceptable and effective conservation strategy. This article reports a study of local perceptions of a community forestry project that aims to help improve the design as well as local acceptance of the project. The data originated from personal interviews conducted in communities around Okwangwo Division of the Cross River National Park in southeast Nigeria and were analysed using ordered logit and binary logit models. The results showed that >50% of the respondents were satisfied with the community forestry project. The respondents’ perceptions were mainly influenced by education, age, gender, and willingness to contribute money to tourism as well as the contributions of cocoa, banana, and afang (Gnetum africanum) to the respondents’ income. The results from this study have important implications for nature conservation in Nigeria and potentially other conservation contexts across the developing world.

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Acknowledgments

I thank all interviewees in Bukalom, Butatong, and Wula villages who spent their valuable time in attending the survey. Appreciation goes to Leif Mattsson of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences for useful comments regarding statistical analysis. Thanks also go to the anonymous persons who reviewed the manuscript for their useful comments.

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  1. Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 230 53, Alnarp, Sweden

    Eugene E. Ezebilo

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  1. Eugene E. Ezebilo
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Correspondence to Eugene E. Ezebilo.

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Ezebilo, E.E. Community Forestry as Perceived by Local People Around Cross River National Park, Nigeria. Environmental Management 49, 207–218 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-011-9765-6

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