write an essay on nigeria protected area system

Nigeria’s nature reserves need more help to protect biodiversity

Senior Lecturer, Forest Resources Management , University of Ilorin

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Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Environment recently nominated Finima Nature Park in River State as a Ramsar site : a wetland of international importance.

These sites are designated under the Ramsar Convention , an intergovernmental environmental treaty established in 1971 by UNESCO. It aims to protect representative, rare or unique wetlands, or those important for conserving biological diversity.

The Finima nature park , when finally gazetted, will be Nigeria’s 12th Ramsar site. Established by the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas Company in 2001, the park covers about 1,000 hectares. It’s a mixture of tropical rain forest, mangrove swamps and freshwater ponds and is home to birds, crocodiles, snakes, alligators and the salt water hippopotamus.

Apart from conserving species, wetlands help to control floods, replenish groundwater, stabilise shorelines, retain nutrients and purify water.

The park will join Nigeria’s protected area of 445 forest reserves, 29 game reserves, 12 strict nature reserves, 11 Ramsar sites, 7 national parks and one biosphere reserve.

Contributions to the environment

The protected area network is vital to protect and conserve the country’s biodiversity.

Protected areas provide habitat for the country’s endangered, rare and endemic plant and animal species . For instance, the White throated guenon ( Cercopithecus erythrogaster ) and Sclater’s guenon ( Cercopithecus sclateri ) are mostly found in Okomu National Park, Edo State. The drill or forest baboon ( Papio leucophaeus ) and the chimpanzee ( Pan troglodytes ellioti ) survive only in Cross River (Cross River State) and Gashaka-Gumti (Taraba/Adamawa States) national parks, as well as some fragments of forests such as Ngel Nyaki forest reserve in Taraba State. The lowland or Cross River gorilla ( Gorilla gorilla diehli ) is endangered and restricted to three sites – Cross River National Park’s Okwangwo Division and Mbe Mountains in Nigeria, and the neighbouring Takamanda Forest Reserve in Cameroon.

The constitution of forest reserves by authorities began in 1889 with Mamu Forest Reserve, created as a buffer between Ibadan and Ijebu territories. In 1956, the Yankari Forest Reserve in Bauchi province became the first game reserve in the country. Kainji Lake National Park , created in 1979, was the first national park. The protected areas are distributed across the various ecological zones of the country. Most of them are included in the World Database for Protected Areas .

The management of these areas is backed by specific legislation. The National Park Service, under the Federal Ministry of Environment, is responsible for the administration of the national parks. The game and forest reserves are controlled and managed by the states in which they are located.

But so far their achievements in conserving biodiversity have been quite fortuitous .

Protected areas in Nigeria are generally hampered by limited funds and resources. Most face a dearth of protection staff and sound working equipment, especially patrol vehicles and modern weapons. Poachers and cattle herders who drive their livestock to graze inside protected areas are a threat.

In recent times, insecurity in and around protected areas has emerged as the greatest threat to their existence. For instance, the Kamuku National Park became a hideout for bandits, cattle rustlers and kidnappers. The Sambisa Game Reserve has long been taken over by Boko Haram . Sambisa forest was a huge vacuum and an ungoverned space that Boko Haram filled as a result of neglect. The situation is the same for many areas around the Lake Chad Basin.

Many of the protected areas in Nigeria are yet to be connected to the national power grid. They sometimes go for weeks without electricity where there is no alternative mode of power generation. This is the case in different sections of Chad Basin National Park, Kamuku National Park, Old Oyo National Park and others. The mobile network, too, is very poor in these areas.

Government has failed to formally gazette the protected area boundaries recommended by management plans. This hinders their management. And there are inadequate support zone programmes for local communities who share their natural frontier and destiny with the protected areas.

Because of these problems, the ecological integrity of the protected areas has been weakened . Valuable species have been lost. The black rhinoceros ( Diceros bicornis ), West African giraffe ( Giraffa camelopardalis peralta ) and cheetah ( Acinonyx jubatus ) are no longer found anywhere in the country.

There is a need to revamp management activities in all protected areas across the country. Facilities and infrastructure must be rehabilitated for effective operation. Adequate funds should be allocated so that the sector can perform its duties and deal with criminals and insurgents. Aerial surveillance and monitoring should be carried out periodically for research and protection purposes.

Local communities around protected areas should also be actively involved in decision making and conservation efforts. This can mitigate conflicts between protected area managers and local communities. It can also reconcile the goals of biodiversity conservation with local people’s social and economic needs.

Nigeria’s protected areas truly need protecting.

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Biodiversity conservation and rural development: inseparable options for Protected Area management. a case study of four Nigerian national parks

2023, Nature Conservation Research: Zapovednaâ Nauka

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Taking the edge off host communities' dependence on protected areas in Nigeria

O E Olaniyi 1,3 , O A Akinsorotan 2 , M Zakaria 3 , C O Martins 3 , S I Adebola 4,6 and O J Oyelowo 5

Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science , Volume 269 , International Conference on Biodiversity 2018 11–13 November 2018, Johor Darul Takzim, Malaysia Citation O E Olaniyi et al 2019 IOP Conf. Ser.: Earth Environ. Sci. 269 012039 DOI 10.1088/1755-1315/269/1/012039

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1 Department of Ecotourism and Wildlife Management, Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria

2 Department of Fisheries and Wildlife Management, Osun State University, Osogbo, Nigeria

3 Department of Forest Management, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang, Malaysia

4 Institute of Ecology and Environmental Studies, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria

5 Department of Forest Conservation and Protection, Forest Research Institute of Nigeria, Ibadan, Nigeria

6 Small and Medium Scale Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria, State Office, Osogbo, Nigeria

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This paper summarises the current state of knowledge on the landscape of protected areas in Nigeria and elucidates on the status, drivers, effects and solutions to host communities' dependence on the protected areas towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goal 15.9 and Aichi Biodiversity Target 11 in Nigeria. The present land coverage (15.15%) of Nigeria's protected areas is highly degraded and far away from the target 4 of the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (2016 – 2020). This is connected to the fact that protected areas constitute the largest food base for host communities' survival in Nigeria. Even, despite the rural-urban drift in search of a white-collar job, a larger percentage of Nigeria's populations are still situated in the rural areas. The participation of the local communities in biodiversity conservation, their wellbeing, culture and livelihood have always been a subject of interest to the stakeholders (local communities, park management, and conservationist) in protected area management due to the role in the sustainability of forest resources. However, three drivers of host communities' dependence on protected areas in Nigeria were identified – socio-cultural, economic and institutional drivers. The option of human displacement from the protected areas had not yielded any positive result over the years. In conclusion, buffer zone policies have to be formulated and inculcated by affected protected areas authorities into their management framework. Also, adoption of community-based participatory forest management, initiation of forest enrichment programmes in degraded protected areas and harvesting of Non-timber Forest Products (NTFPs) should be encouraged to play diverse contributory roles in the improvement of rural livelihoods.

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PROTECTED AREA MANAGEMENT IN NIGERIA: A REVIEW

• Hassan Abdulaziz Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Faculty of Built Environment, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 UTM Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia
• Foziah Johar Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Faculty of Built Environment, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 UTM Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia
• Mohammad Rafee Majid Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Faculty of Built Environment, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 UTM Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia
• Nasiru Idris Medugu Department of Geography, Faculty of Social Sciences, Nasarawa State University Keffi, P.M.B. 1022 Keffi, Nasarawa State, Nigeria

Nigeria like other countries has experienced rapid increase in number and sizes of protected areas in the last century. As a result, a number of policies, agencies and departments were established to ensure proper protection and management of these areas. To ensure management effectiveness, frequent evaluation is necessary. This paper is a review of relevant literatures on protected area management effectiveness and collaboration in management. The findings of the review indicated that the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) framework is the most widely used for assessing management effectiveness of protected areas. However, a limitation of the framework is its deficiency to integrate collaboration and motivation. These factors play vital roles in effective management of protected areas through promoting wildlife conservation particularly in developing world. Therefore, this paper proposes a hybrid framework for evaluating protected area management effectiveness, consisting of the IUCN framework, collaboration and motivation to be used in subsequent assessment of protected areas. 

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Protected Areas and Management Practices: Evidence in Southwest Nigeria

Mayowa Fasona

Department of Geography, University of Lagos, Akoka-Yaba, Nigeria

Adedoyin Bello

Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Crescent University, Abeokuta, Nigeria

Laboratory for Remote Sensing and Cartography, Department of Geography, University of Lagos, Akoka-Yaba, Nigeria

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Forests are important plant communities that consist of trees and other woody vegetation that perform life supporting functions on earth. Forest reserves are areas protected from use mainly by the government in order to preserve this resource. With the phenomenal increasing population globally and in particular Nigeria and over dependence on forest resources, it is crucial to be aware of the rate of deforestation and how to curb it. In view of this, the paper assessed the conditions of the forest reserves and management systems by government officials and communities in south-western Nigeria, particularly Ekiti and Ondo states. Remote sensing techniques and social surveys were employed in carrying out this task. Landsat imagery of 1984, 2000 and 2016 and the Nigerian topographic map of 1960 were the spatial datasets used. Two sets of questionnaires were also used for the study covering community leaders (10), and government agencies (26) to further explain the observed changes and management systems. Results show that there has been a general decline in the area of heavy forests in most of the forest reserves. This decline was as much as 48%, and 54% of its base year size in Ekiti, and Ondo state respectively; which has given way to the emergence of light forests and the underlying rock outcrops. Forests are mainly in care of government officials who widely accepted the reality of deforestation within their jurisdiction while also acknowledging excessive lumbering and forest clearance for agriculture as their main challenges. The need for more aggressive forest regeneration efforts by agencies in charge of the protected areas; urgent delimiting of these reserves, increased capital investment in forest monitoring, and improvement in agricultural system efficiency were recommended.

Forest Degradation, Land Use Land Cover Change, Forest Management, Forest Reserve

Mayowa Fasona, Adedoyin Bello, Agbor Ruth. (2022). Protected Areas and Management Practices: Evidence in Southwest Nigeria. International Journal of Environmental Protection and Policy , 9 (6), 140-152. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijepp.20210906.12

Mayowa Fasona; Adedoyin Bello; Agbor Ruth. Protected Areas and Management Practices: Evidence in Southwest Nigeria. Int. J. Environ. Prot. Policy 2022 , 9 (6), 140-152. doi: 10.11648/j.ijepp.20210906.12

Mayowa Fasona, Adedoyin Bello, Agbor Ruth. Protected Areas and Management Practices: Evidence in Southwest Nigeria. Int J Environ Prot Policy . 2022;9(6):140-152. doi: 10.11648/j.ijepp.20210906.12

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2018 United Nations List of Protected Areas of Nigeria

Information extracted from the july 2018 wdpa release, this list was compiled from data based on the july 2018 version of the wdpa. in addition to protected areas with spatial data in the wdpa, the 2018 version of the un list includes sites for which no spatial data is available but which have been provided by the relevant country. management effectiveness information is extracted from gd-pame. both databases are updated and released via www.protectedplanet.net on a monthly basis. the depiction and use of boundaries and related data shown on maps are not guaranteed to be error free nor do they necessarily imply official endorsement or acceptance by the united nations..