About This Report
This report presents a summary of field research carried out for a masters thesis in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation. The research, conducted over an eight month period in 1998/99, sought to identify strategies for effective monitoring in community based natural resource management (CBNRM) projects by studying the monitoring system of ADMADE, the Zambia Wildlife Authority's program for community-based wildlife management in Game Management Areas (GMAs). The research focused on issues such as soliciting community participation in monitoring, information flow and management, stakeholders and information needs, synthesizing lessons learned, data quality, using indicators for wildlife monitoring, and capacity building.
This study involved three inter-related tracks of research:
- description and analysis of ADMADE's monitoring needs, strategies, and activities
- evaluatory exercises to measure the effectiveness of ADMADE's approach to monitoring
- development of interventions to strengthen ADMADE's monitoring system
This paper is a precursor to a more comprehensive masters thesis which will describe the research in greater detail. Certain sections, which will appear in the final thesis, have been reduced or omitted from this report, including:
- the general background on wildlife ecology and management in Zambia
- a literature review of monitoring and data quality issues
- more detailed analysis of my interviews with village scouts
As noted above, the focus of this research was primarily on the strategies and processes of monitoring at the program level, rather than the specific results of monitoring. Hence readers hoping to see results that can answer "does ADMADE work?" may find this study to be disappointingly scant on such conclusions. However those wanting to know "what tools and strategies has ADMADE developed to find out whether it works?" will hopefully find the results of this study interesting and beneficial.
This report is available for downloading in its entirely from http://nersp.nerdc.ufl.edu/~alyons, or by emailing the author at alyons@nersp.nerdc.ufl.edu.