Special Section on African Conservation: A periodic opportunity to highlight conservation science from Africa

Full text

EDITORIAL
Special Section on African Conservation: A periodic
opportunity to highlight conservation science from Africa
Although conservation science has burgeoned as a disci-
pline in the past three decades, its growth has been
disproportionate across continents, and critical biases
persist. Among them is the relatively small (10% of all
studies conducted between 2011 and 2015) representation
of Africa-based studies in conservation literature despite
the substantial contribution of the continent to global
biodiversity and conservation (Di Marco et al., 2017).
In light of this, and in response to increasing calls
from within and beyond the Society to acknowledge
research and representation biases in field ecology and
conservation science (Baker, Eichhorn, & Griffiths, 2019;
Chaudhury & Colla, 2020; Perez & Hogan, 2018), the
Africa Section of the Society for Conservation Biology is
proud to launch the first African Conservation Special
Section within Conservation Science and Practice.
The Special Section is intended as a periodic collation
of recent publications on conservation research and prac-
tice efforts occurring on the continent. The collections
serve to fulfill two critical objectives—first, to highlight
conservation research occurring on the continent and
second, to promote the work and experiences of African
conservation scientists and practitioners. Thus, we are
actively seeking papers spanning all aspects of conserva-
tion science from Africa and about Africa. Moreover, we
aim to use this and future special sections to consciously
facilitate the exchange, transfer, diffusion, and uptake of
empirical information and knowledge generated and
published by African researchers based in African
institutions.
In this inaugural African Conservation Special
Section, we bring to you seven contributions that broadly
speak to the kinds of innovative research that is being
undertaken in Africa to meet some of her most pressing
conservation challenges. We find that human–wildlife
conflict continues to be a stark reality for communities
residing in proximity to wildlife and is a critical
challenge for conservation in Africa, particularly among
agropastoral communities. Three of the seven papers
address strategies to reduce human–wildlife conflict,
ranging across a spectrum from reducing poaching
(Ngorima, Brown, Masunungure, & Biggs, 2020) to
rethinking the design of financial compensation schemes
(Braczkowski et al., 2020) and to applying social science
approaches to improve the understanding of social norms
related to human behavior and conflict reduction (Perry
et al., 2020). These papers suggest that there is no silver
bullet for addressing human–wildlife conflict success-
fully. They also highlight the importance of continued
research and the monitoring of conservation attitudes on
this issue in order to conduct robust assessments of their
effectiveness and potential for scaling up. As a set of
papers, they point to important insight on local context
as it relates to understanding human–wildlife conflict:
that although it matters, some features about human–
wildlife conflict are shared across countries, and lessons
learned in one area might be meaningful for others.
Participatory wildlife management and co-manage-
ment of natural resources are increasingly being tested in
Africa. Of special note in this issue is Gardner et al.'s
(2020) synopsis of lessons learned from 15 years of partic-
ipatory management of marine resources in Madagascar.
A strong global movement to better integrate local com-
munities in fisheries management is well informed by
this retrospective analysis of Malagasy marine manage-
ment areas. Gardner et al. (2020) point to the importance
of co-management, non-governmental organization
(NGO) support, and other features that foster success.
Meanwhile, they also identify a variety of persistent chal-
lenges (e.g., the difficulty of changing fishery supply
chains and external drivers eroding sustainable actions)
that constrain success. These long-term assessments can
be invaluable for fine-tuning global efforts to secure the
sustainability of biodiversity within artisanal fisheries.
Finally, we see that conservation practitioners in
Africa are taking advantage of new tools and technologies
for monitoring species and adapting them to fit their spe-
cific contexts or target species. Fritsch and Downs (2020)
explore the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) to
conduct comprehensive population censuses of a species
Received: 23 November 2020 Accepted: 23 November 2020
DOI: 10.1111/csp2.334
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided
the original work is properly cited.
© 2020 The Authors. Conservation Science and Practice published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Conservation Biology
Conservation Science and Practice. 2020;2:e334. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/csp2 1of2
https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.334

for which it is otherwise expensive and time-consuming
to monitor (e.g., the common hippopotamus); Jones,
Papworth, St. John, Vickery, and Keane (2020) develop
social science tools for improving the assessment of
hunters' harvest rates in Liberia, while Rice, from the
University of Cape Town, and colleagues (Rice,
Sowman, & Bavnik, 2020) present a Theory of Change
framework for use in the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity
Framework.
These papers represent a concise glimpse into the rich
and varied aspects of conservation research that is being
conducted in Africa with high relevance for conservation
practice. We look forward to additional special sections
that continue to build the depth and breadth of our
understanding of how conservation interventions can
have a positive impact on biodiversity outcomes and
improve people's well-being in Africa.
Tuyeni H. Mwampamba
1
Israel T. Borokini
2
Benis N. Egoh
3,4
1
Institute for Ecosystems and Sustainability Research,
National Autonomous University of Mexico, Morelia,
Michoacan, Mexico
2
Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Biology Program,
Department of Biology, University of Nevada, Reno,
Nevada
3
Department of Earth System Science, University of
California, Irvine, California
4
International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA)
Cameroon, Yaoundé, Cameroon
Correspondence
Tuyeni H. Mwampamba, Institute for Ecosystems and
Sustainability Research, National Autonomous
University of Mexico - Morelia Campus, 8701 Antigua
Carretera a Pátzcuaro, Col. Exhacienda de San José de la
Huerta, CP 58190 Morelia, Michoacan, Mexico.
Email: tuyeni@iies.unam.mx
ORCID
Tuyeni H. Mwampamba https://orcid.org/0000-0003-
4635-5774
Israel T. Borokini https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1258-
7932
Benis N. Egoh https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9126-7784
REFERENCES
Baker, K., Eichhorn, M. P., & Griffiths, M. (2019). Decolonizing
field ecology. Biotropica,51(3), 288–292. https://doi.org/10.
1111/btp.12663
Braczkowski, A., Fattebert, J., Schenk, R., O'Bryan, C., Biggs, D., &
Maron, M. (2020). Evidence for increasing human-wildlife con-
flict despite a financial compensation scheme on the edge of a
Ugandan National Park. Conservation Science and Practice,2,
e309. https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.309
Chaudhury, A., & Colla, S. (2020). Next steps in dismantling dis-
crimination: Lessons from ecology and conservation science.
Conservation Letters, e12774. https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12774
Di Marco, M., Chapman, S., Althor, G., Kearney, S., Besancon, C.,
Butt, N., …Watson, J. E. (2017). Changing trends and persisting
biases in three decades of conservation science. Global Ecology
and Conservation,10,32–42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.
2017.01.008
Fritsch, C. J., & Downs, C. T. (2020). Evaluation of low-cost
consumer-grade UAVs for conducting comprehensive high-
frequency population censuses of hippopotamus populations.
Conservation Science and Practice,2, e281. https://doi.org/10.
1111/csp2.281
Gardner, C., Cripps, S., Day, L. P., Dewar, K., Gough, C., Peabody, S.,
…Harris, A. (2020). A decade and a half of learning from
Madagascar's first locally managed marine area. Conservation
Science and Practice,2, e298. https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.298
Jones, S. C. Z., Papworth, S. K., St. John, F. A. V., Vickery, J. A., &
Keane, A. M. (2020). Consequences of survey method for esti-
mating hunters' harvest rates. Conservation Science and Prac-
tice,2, e315. https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.315
Ngorima, A., Brown, A., Masunungure, C., & Biggs, D. (2020). Local
community benefits from elephants: Can willingness to support
anti-poaching efforts be strengthened? Conservation Science
and Practice,2, e303. https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.303
Perez, T. M., & Hogan, J. A. (2018). The changing nature of collabo-
ration in tropical ecology and conservation. Biotropica,50(4),
563–567. https://doi.org/10.1111/btp.12573
Perry, L. R., Moorhouse, T. P., Sibanda, L., Sompeta, S. L.,
MacDonald, D. W., & Loveridge, A. J. (2020). Everyone is nor-
mal: Consistent livestock management norms and demographic
clusters in Kenya and Zimbabwe. Conservation Science and
Practice,2, e313. https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.313
Rice, W. S., Sowman, M. R., & Bavnik, M. (2020). Using theory of
change to improve post-2020 conservation: A proposed frame-
work and recommendations for use. Conservation Science and
Practice,2, e301. https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.301
2of2 EDITORIAL