Impact of Human Activity and Local Community Perception on Wildlife Conservation: the case of Kabana Natural Forest, Jimma Zone, Oromia National Regional State, Southwest Ethiopia

A study on the impact of human activity and local community perception towards wildlife conservation in Kabana forest was conducted in four purposely selected Kebeles of LimmuKossaworeda of Jimma zone from September,2013 to June, 2014. The objective of the study was to examine the impact of human activity and local community perception that negatively affects the wildlife conservation in Kabana Forest that had contributed to the conservation of wildlife.Personal observation and formal discussion were used to identify the study site. Four Kebeles of the district that have common boundary with the forest were purposively selected for this study. For this study, 168, respondents were selected by simple random sampling from the householders. Eighteen key informants were also selected by purposive sampling technique for interview with local community elders, Woreda and Kebelelevel agricultural experts and Kebele administrators. Semi structured questionnaire, in-depth interview and observation were employed as data gathering. To analyze the data,χ2 (chi-Square) test was used to determine association between categorical variables while descriptive statistics was employed to present frequencies and proportions. From the result of the study, it was found thatthe trends of wildlife population in the study area declined 57.14% from time to time due to human impact such as forest clearing for coffee plantation and farm land expansion(83.9%), unauthorized use of the resource for firewood collection(48.8%) and the growing of livestock grazing in the site. The attitude of local community towards wildlife is negative (60.71%) as a result of increase in wildlife induced damage(77.4%) like crop raiding and predation, poor relationship with conservationists(64%) and lack of awareness (67.8%) about wildlife conservation. Arranging continuous awareness creation program for stakeholders to improve the local community attitude, participating the local community in the decision making process to increase conservation effort were identified as the possible solutions that should be met to alleviate the problem.Generally, if these practices are incorporated with current conservation efforts, it will greatly support the conservation of rapidly diminishing natural resource in general and wildlife in particular in the area. Key words: Wildlife, conservation, human impact, community attitude