IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group - Digital Cat Library |
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| Caro, T.M.; Rejm nek, M.; Pelkey, N. | |
| Which mammals benefit from protection in East Africa? | |
| 2000 Book Chapter | |
East Africa has one of the most developed networks of protected areas in the world, including well-known national parks such as Tsavo, Queen Elizabeth and Serengeti and famous game reserves such as the Selous (Siegfried et al., 1998). Many of these areas were originally set up for sport hunting in the early part of the twentieth century because professional hunters were attracted to places of high mammal abundance where it was easy to shoot trophy species (Selous, 1908; Roosevelt and Heller, 1922). Subsequently they became national parks or game reserves in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. These hunting grounds were often dry season refuges for mammals, attracted to a swamp (e.g. Amboseli and Katavi) or river (e.g. the Nile and Great Ruaha Rivers) that held water year-round. Exceptionally, some hunting areas encompassed entire migratory routes such as the Serengeti Plains. When these areas came under formal protection, governments effectively inherited the legacy of sportsmen's choices of where best to hunt mammals. In this chapter, we investigate how effective these protected areas are in conserving mammals by asking three interrelated questions: 1.how well do these areas protect mammal diversity? 2.which mammal species currently benefit most from protection? 3. which aspects of protection are the most important in conserving mammals in contemporary protected areas? |
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