| Overview : Botswana Protected Area estate is well defined but there are concerns that have been noted about the progressive decline of biodiversity in the Botswana protected areas, including in the Chobe Complex attributed, at least in part, to anthropogenic influences, including uncoordinated sectoral policies and land use conflicts, failure to re-invest in the PA/wildlife resource, and management systems. Chobe is fully stocked, but there are some concerns that domination of the biomass by elephants (91%), the effects of past land uses (cattle stock routes, logging, burning), inappropriate or disruptive land uses (e.g. fencing, farms on PA boundaries) may be exacerbated by climate change and therefore careful monitoring and adaptive management of these ecosystems is critical in order to help PA managers develop and implement sound mitigation strategies against those biodiversity conservation threats. In order for the biodiversity conservation threats to be fully appreciated and dealt with adequately, the management of a protected area requires full integration of the monitoring programs for wildlife and habitat status. If fully integrated in the protected area management and decision making processes, monitoring contributes significantly to effective management of the resources. It provides managers with information on the status of wildlife populations before deciding on the appropriate course of conservation to take. Monitoring programs can also evaluate the effectiveness of management actions relative to the set objectives. Also, in an adaptive management setting, monitoring programs can provide the important feedback circle for identifying and learning about the action that can result in failure or success of a conservation method. In order to make informed decisions for effective management of a protected area, reliable information about the status of wildlife and habitat, as well as their response to interventions is needed. This kind of data becomes easily available if monitoring programs for wildlife and habitat are integrated in the day to day management of a protected area. Also, the monitoring programs should have clear objectives and targets to be effective. The poorly designed monitoring programs will provide poor quality information on this and can do more harm to the conservation efforts. Therefore, the design stage of a monitoring program should be carefully considered and given the expertise it deserves to avoid wasting resources on its implementation while it cannot yield good results. It is in light of this, that UNDP seeks the service of an expert to help with the monitoring of the wildlife and habitat status within and around the Chobe National Park and to come up with a monitoring protocol for wildlife and habitat within and around CNP. The monitoring program should have a simple design and its measures be straightforward, unambiguous and replicable. This will promote its sustainability both financially and in terms of technical staff capacity. |
