Socio-economic implications of crop raiding around Pendjari Biosphere Reserve, northern Benin
Channel: IASC COMMONS
Date: 29/07/2020

Socio-economic implications of crop raiding around Pendjari Biosphere Reserve, northern Benin
by Sylvain Efio, Faculty of Agronomics Sciences, University of Abomey-Calavi (Benin)

Human-wildlife conflict is becoming a serious threat for both wildlife conservation and human wellbeing. Its main representations are livestock predation and crop raiding. This paper examines the problem of crop raiding by wildlife and its socio-economic implications around Pendjari Biosphere Reserve in northern Benin. Data were collected in 2017 through field observations, semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire survey of 209 farmers of the surrounding villages of the Reserve and 98% of them reported losses of crop every year due to wildlife. Crops with the highest degree of destruction are cotton, maize, millet and sorghum and the wild animals responsible for this are mainly baboons, warthogs and elephants. Crop raiding causes, for an average farmer, an annual financial cost ranging from 94.64$ in farms of sorghum to 311.8$ in farms of cotton. Compared to the annual minimum salary in Benin, these number are very large. Farmers try to manage the impacts of crop raiding with various dissuasive methods such as guarding. But the heavy toll of crop raiding and the low level of effectiveness of mitigation measures clearly reveal the vulnerability of agricultural households bordering protected areas.