Wildlife Population Trends

Efforts by Wildlife Conservation Society to demonstrate the COMACO can provide a new, effective and complementary strategy to wildlife protection requires a statistical analysis of population trends that correlate with the reduction of threats to wildlife COMACO has achieved since 2002. As a result, COMACO has become a large landscape-scale experiment in wildlife management to test the relationships between food security, rural income and conservation. To compare wildlife populations during the time line that preceded COMACO's introduction to post-COMACO interventions, aerial wildlife census surveys using the same flight paths and methologies over repeated years was used, extending from 1999 to 2006.

Population estimates from the 2006 survey showed a preliminary indication of population change for selected species relative to population sizes prior to COMACO (1999) and at the beginning of the COMACO intervention (2002). No significant population decreases were found for any of the analyses. Significant increases were found for hartebeest for the combined surveyed area sample and for two of the four COMACO core areas for high-risk, low-density species group, which included wildebeest, kudu, roan, eland, and waterbuck. Of interest, almost every species showed a downward trend from 1999 to 2002, suggesting that populations were in decline at the beginning of the COMACO program. Increases in all populations would be unlikely within 4 years, given the likelihood for firstly a stabilization of species occurrence followed by stronger evidence of recovery of population numbers.

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