Role of Environmental Education on Human-Wildlife Conflict in Kainji Lake National Park, Nigeria

Abstract

The research work assessed the role of environmental education on Human-Wildlife conflict in Kainji Lake National Park, Nigeria. Simple random techniques was used to administer questionnaire to the Park staff while purposive sampling technique was used to select the support zone communities and simple random sampling techniques was use to administer questionnaire to the household. The sample size was put at 120 respondents, of which eighty one (81) questionnaire were retrieved. The finding shows that majority of the respondents (76 individuals) has experience human-wildlife conflict before while 5 individuals has no experience with human-wildlife conflicts before. The various preventive method used by the respondents to prevent human-wildlife conflicts indicated that Watch guarding recorded the highest (27.2%), followed by Scare crow with 23.5% while fire and smoke is the least with 8.6%. Majority (66.7%) of the respondents are aware of environmental education while 33.3% are not aware. Role of environmental education in managing human-wildlife conflicts are supporting the communities to recover and rebuild themselves after Wildlife conflicts recorded the highest with 32.1% while maintain community trust is the least with 6.2%. The study concludes that majority of the respondents are aware of environmental education and they indicated that environmental education are moderately effective.