KNOWLEDGE, ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTION TOWARDS THE WILDLIFE AND PROTECTED AREAS: THE CASE OF COMMUNITIES LIVING IN AND AROUND CHEBERA-CHURCHURA NATIONAL PARK, SOUTHERN ETHIOPIA

Knowledge, attitude and perceptions of community towards Human-Wildlife Conflict are based on the problems caused by wildlife, social, political, cultural, economic and ecological factors. The proposed solutions or mitigation strategies are aligned with community perceptions and attitudes toward wildlife. Thus, knowledge of these is very important to designing interventions. Here we investigated the knowledge, attitudes and perception of communities towards the wildlife and the protected area in and around Chebera-Churchura National Park, Ethiopia from November 2010 to January 2011. Three hundred semi-structured interviews in seven villages, various focus group discussions and direct observations were conducted. Data were analyzed by SPSS software version 16.0. The results show that most of the respondents had negative attitude towards the park (87.67%) and focal carnivores (95.4%). Lion (Panthera leo), leopard (Panthera pardus) and spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta) were the most hated animals due to their livestock loss, psychological stress and human attacks. Only 4.6% interviewees like focal carnivores with generating tourism revenue, cleaning the environment and use as history for their environment. In addition, the relationship between park managers and surrounding communities is negative. Factors like age, level of education, socio-economic activities and human-wildlife conflict were affecting the attitudes and perceptions of local communities. Thus, educate the society; create positive attitude towards the park and its resources and improving cooperation between communities and the park managers to increase the benefit of the societies from the park were recommended.