Protected area management in Nigeria: a review

Abstract

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.