Levels of community participation and satisfaction with decentralized wildlife management in Idodi-Pawaga Wildlife Management Area, Tanzania

This research article published by Taylor & Francis Online, 2017Participatory approaches to conservation are viewed as a plausible alternative to the old ‘fortress conservation’ approach. The design and implementation of these approaches in developing countries have tended to embrace community participation through decentralized governance mechanisms in the past three decades. However, sustainable conservation approaches that maintain community livelihoods while conserving biodiversity are challenged with meeting both objectives. In addressing this challenge, little attention has been given to an empirical analysis of community’s satisfaction levels on how they participated in the design and implementation of this approach. In this article, we use a mixed method approach using both quantitative and qualitative data to examine levels of satisfaction and participation of local communities in the Idodi-Pawaga Wildlife Management Area (WMA), south-western Tanzania. We find that social economic factors (e.g. age, household size, gender, number of years living in the same location and participation/non-participation) influence, in different ways, the satisfaction levels of community’s participation towards the WMA creation. Due to inadequate participation, we find that the WMA design and implementation process failed from the beginning to actively involve the local communities and this has resulted in the near absence of the promised economic benefits from wildlife conservation. We suggest that participation should go beyond the simple information sharing to actively engage the local communities in key planning activities from the beginning of any WMA programme. It is also important to take into consideration their levels of satisfaction with the process of decision-making if meaningful decentralized governance is to be achieved

Pregnant women and infants as sentinel populations to monitor prevalence of malaria: results of pilot study in Lake Zone of Tanzania

As malaria control interventions are scaled-up, rational approaches are needed for monitoring impact over time. One proposed approach includes monitoring the prevalence of malaria infection among pregnant women and children at the time of routine preventive health facility (HF) visits. This pilot explored the feasibility and utility of tracking the prevalence of malaria infection in pregnant women attending their first antenatal care (ANC) visit and infants presenting at 9-12 months of age for measles vaccination.; Pregnant women attending first ANC and infants nine to 12 months old presenting for measles vaccination at a non-probability sample of 54 HFs in Tanzania's Lake Zone (Mara, Mwanza and Kagera Regions) were screened for malaria infection using a malaria rapid diagnostic test (RDT) from December 2012 to November 2013, regardless of symptoms. Participants who tested positive were treated for malaria per national guidelines. Data were collected monthly.; Overall 89.9 and 78.1 % of expected monthly reports on malaria infection prevalence were received for pregnant women and infants, respectively. Among 51,467 pregnant women and 35,155 infants attending routine preventive HF visits, 41.2 and 37.3 % were tested with RDT, respectively. Malaria infection prevalence was 12.8 % [95 % confidence interval (CI) 11.3-14.3] among pregnant women and 11.0 % (95 % CI 9.5-12.5) among infants, and varied by month. There was good correlation of the prevalence of malaria among pregnant women and infants at the HF level (Spearman rho = 0.6; p < 0.001). This approach is estimated to cost $1.28 for every person tested, with the RDT accounting for 72 % of the cost.; Malaria infection was common and well correlated among pregnant women and infants attending routine health services. Routine screening of these readily accessible populations may offer a practical strategy for continuously tracking malaria trends, particularly seasonal variation. Positivity rates among afebrile individuals presenting for routine care offer an advantage as they are unaffected by the prevalence of other causes of febrile illness, which could influence positivity rates among febrile patients presenting to outpatient clinics. The data presented here suggest that in addition to contributing to clinical management, ongoing screening of pregnant women could be used for routine surveillance and detection of hotspots

Distributions and phylogeographic data of rheophilic freshwater fishes provide evidences on the geographic extension of a central-Brazilian amazonian palaeoplateau in the area of the present day Pantanal Wetland

The analysis of the distribution patterns presented by examples of freshwater fishes restricted to headwater habitat: the anostomid Leporinus octomaculatus, the characins Jubiaba acanthogaster, Oligosarcus perdido, Moenkhausia cosmops, Knodus chapadae, Planaltina sp., the loricariid Hypostomus cochliodon, and the auchenipterid Centromochlus sp. provided evidences of a relatively recent shared history between the highlands of the upper rio Paraguay and adjoining upland drainage basins. Restricted to headwater of the uplands in the upper rio Paraguay and adjoining basins, these species provide biological evidence of the former extension of the central Brazilian plateau before the origin of the Pantanal Wetland. Disjunction took place due to an ecological barrier to these rheophilic taxa represented tectonic subsidence related to the origin of the Pantanal Wetland. Molecular analysis of Jubiaba acanthogaster revealed that the sample from the upper rio Xingu basin are the sister-group of a clade that includes samples from the upper rio Arinos (upper rio Tapajós) plus the upper rio Paraguay basin, supporting the assumption that the origin of the upper rio Paraguay basin causing vicariance between this basin and the upper rio Tapajós is the least vicariant event in the evolutionary history of the group. © 2013 Sociedade Brasileira de Ictiologia