Connectivity and boundaries revisited: Livestock herders and parks in Central Africa

Landscape conservation has looked beyond protected areas (PAs) to increase habitat connectivity for wildlife populations. The importance of these efforts has only grown with the significant and often unpredictable changes brought by climate change and land-use changes. These changes are affecting not only habitat connectivities for wildlife but resource connectivities for maintaining the livelihoods of people who live within conservation landscapes. Seeking to maintain or increase both types of connectivities requires a rethinking of the management of PA boundaries. The relationships among livelihood connectivity, rapid change, and PA boundaries are analyzed in this paper through a case study of the relationship between livestock herders and PAs in Central Africa's Greater Zakouma Ecosystem (GZE). A mixed methods approach was followed involving group and individual interviews of pastoralists about changes affecting herd movements, remote sensing analysis of biophysical constraints to herd movements; and spatial analysis of the emergent effects of the interaction of strictlyenforced PA boundaries and documented changes. Territorial approaches with rigid boundaries are shown to undermine pastoral livelihood connectivities with important implications for biodiversity conservation in the GZE and beyond. These results call for a rethinking of conservation boundaries through greater engagement with local residents and their micro-geographies of natural resource dependence.