Abstract:
Despite the considerable worldwide efforts to establish the wildlife protected areas - a
strategy construed as the most feasible in maintaining the high quality habitats for healthy
wildlife populations - destruction of wildlife habitats has remained the leading threat to
biodiversity. This destruction, taking different forms (i.e. degradation, fragmentation or
outright loss) is a function of the growing human activities - prompted mainly by such factors
as poverty, demographic factors, land tenure systems, inadequate conservation status,
development policies and economic incentives. This paper reviews these contributing factors
and presents the associated ecological impacts – manifested by a decline of wildlife
populations and local extinction of species. Provision of adequate conservation status to
critical wildlife habitats, addressing the problem of human population growth, adoption of
poverty reduction strategies that are conservation- friendly and discouraging the destructive
development policies are recommended as the measures to mitigate the problem. Other
measures entail genuine involvement of the local communities in conservation, provision of
adequate economic incentives, relevant research and participatory land use planning. In
conclusion, the paper argues that, given the nature of the problem, if a lasting solution is to be
realized, habitat loss should be viewed as a multisectoral rather than a single sectoral issue.
Therefore different stakeholders should play an active role in halting and pre-empting the
problem. We propose criteria for selection of the relevant stakeholders
