Illegal wildlife use and protected area management in Ghana Original Research Article

Starting in 2004, a system to monitor patrol staff performance, illegal wildlife use and trends in large-mammal populations was established in nine protected areas in Ghana. The main objectives were to use monitoring feedback as the foundation for informed decisions to aid adaptive and performance management, and to identify the most important factors contributing to wildlife conservation. The competitive management system resulted in a doubling of patrol performance. As a result, in the six savannah sites, poaching was reduced to acceptable levels by the end of 2007, but in the three forest sites, poaching remained high. To reverse poaching trends in the forest required a conventional patrol effort that was 10 times higher than that in the savannah.