Expending Rangers’ Efforts in Estimating Incidence of Threats to Wildlife Conservation in a Protected Area

Abstract

Wildlife resources monitoring is considered a critical aspect for documenting trends in wildlife threats and yet the process is often plagued with poor design and implementation. Management of the Kalakpa Resource Reserve (KRR) in Ghana relies on ad hoc conservation strategies in dealing with wildlife threats. The study assessed the rate and trends of threats to wildlife species using field patrol records from 2007 to 2012 of all observations of illegal activities encountered by wildlife guards during regular law enforcement patrols Jonckheere Terpstra Trend and Kruskall Wallis H tests were conducted to compare and determine the linear associations in the yearly and monthly encounter rates of illegal activity (IA) as well as evaluate variations in incidences of IA respectively over the study period. The study revealed eleven (11) categories of illegal activities were in the area which varied significantly in the rate of encounter over the years. Significant decreasing trends were also observed illegal activities. and on a downward trends. Law enforcement efforts in KRR were effective in reducing wildlife threats however, efforts should be made to adopt modern methods of detecting wildlife threats during field patrol activities.