or when birder observations occur within protected areas (Figures S3 and S4), or AP changing the composition of birders toward those who are more skilled or more likely to report observing greater numbers of birds (Figure S5). Our additional replication of a flexible method of controlling for surveyor effort lends further credence to these results (Figure S6). We find similar year-by-year changes when we estimate the effect of AP management on the number of bird species observed, though the average effect is slightly negative in this case (Figure S7 and Table S4). The marked rise in bird abundances following transference to AP management reinforces the notion that AP management improves wildlife outcomes.

# **2.2 Tourism**

We now turn our attention to the effect of AP management on tourism. There are several reasons why AP might boost tourism. The increased wildlife populations under AP management could attract more tourists, or AP’s potentially superior ability to market its parks internationally compared to government-managed parks could increase visitation. Due to the lack of comprehensive data on actual tourist visits to parks across Africa, we rely on the following proxies as the best available measures of tourism.

We first utilize data from the widely-used citizen science platform iNaturalist to approximate tourism visits [60], following prior research leveraging photographs of wildlife posted to social media platforms like Flickr to measure tourism [61, 62]. Users of iNaturalist upload geolocated and timestamped photos of flora and fauna, providing information regarding the location and timing of park visits (SI A.3). It is important to note, however, that we cannot use iNaturalist data as a measure of wildlife outcomes due to the absence of information on surveyor effort.

We estimate that AP management significantly increases the probability of positive iNaturalist visits by 21.5 percentage points, or by 47% relative to the mean among control areas (Figure 3, Row 3 and Figure S8). “Positive visits” refers to the presence of any iNaturalist observations in a given protected area-year; this condition is met slightly less than half of the time in the control group. We obtain similar results when we exclude observations submitted by potential protected area staff (Figure S9).

To supplement this finding, we also use eBird data as a proxy for tourism (SI A.4). On average, AP management increases the probability of positive eBird visits by 19 percentage points, or by 37% relative to the mean among control areas (Figure 3, Row 4).

For both tourism proxies, interpretation of these effects is not complicated because there is no trend in pre-period outcomes (Figures S8 and S10). We also obtain positive effects when we use the log number of iNaturalist or eBird visits as the dependent variable (Figure S11). Considering the two proxies together, it seems likely that AP management increases tourism.

# **2.3 Economic Development**

In addition to its efforts to conserve wildlife and stimulate tourism, AP initiates local economic development projects in communities adjacent to the protected areas they manage. We use data on “asset wealth” from Atlas AI, a private data provider, to test 8