An assessment of the impacts of wildlife management areas (WMAS) on welfare of adjacent communities case study of Burunge WMA, Manyara region

Wildlife Management Areas (WMA) is an approach of conserving wildlife resources through making people the owners of the resources and hence improving their welfare. This study is conducted to assess the welfare objective of this program to the adjacent local communities in Burunge WMA Manyara. The assessment is done by looking on the difference between the treatment group (those who participate in WMA) and control group (non-participants). This study is based on primary data therefore apart from a detailed literature review a set of questionnaire and field observation was used to collect data. The Propensity Score Matching (PSM) and descriptive statistics was used to analyze the data, and in both methods it has been found out that the project has impacts on welfare of the people given the evidenced differences in welfare of the two groups. The descriptive statistics shows that those households in the treatment group (those who are in Burunge WMA) have actually lower levels of living standards than those in control group (non-participants) given the nature of their houses and the fact that they cannot afford three meals per day. PSM results are also in consistency with the descriptive result as they reveal that the consumption expenditure of participants is lower than that of non-participants. This study recommends the possibility of the government to empower the Burunge WMA to collect more revenues and for the case of poverty reduction at the household level a possibility of cash transfer directly to the households is recommended.