Conservation news 327 extinction risk Globally Endangered (GE), Evolutionarily New tourism concessions in National Parks to Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) scores can be benefit community conservancies in Namibia computed for designing conservation strategies (see www. edgeofexistence.org). Although the long-term survival of protected areas is widely fi The availability of genetic data resources linked to a large believed to depend on them bene ting local communities, and reliable repository of taxonomy is therefore essential it is unusual for communities to be given major tourism for phylogenetically informed conservation strategies. opportunities in national parks. The recent allocation During 2010–2013 the EU Indexing for Life (i4Life) project of tourism concessions to community conservancies in (www.i4life.eu), coordinated at the University of Reading, Namibia has passed with little comment and should be ’ UK, established a virtual research community to enable six recognized more widely as a major milestone in Namibia s partners to engage in a programme to enumerate the support for community-based conservation. extent of life. The partners were the Global Biodiversity The development of the Caprivi Nature Park provided the fi fi Information Facility, the European Molecular Biology rst impetus towards community bene ts from protected- 1990 Laboratory–European Bioinformatics Institute, IUCN, area tourism in Namibia. At independence in local 6 000 LifeWatch, the Encyclopedia of Life, and the Barcode of people (about , of whom lived in the Park) agreed that it Life programme. should be upgraded to the Bwabwata National Park only if fi The project built on the common need of these partners they were to be the primary bene ciaries. The Palmwag, to access high-quality taxonomic data in the partnership’s Etendeka and Hobatere concession areas in Kunene Region databases, and was a European e-Infrastructure project, co- had also been designated for conservation by traditional funded by the European Commission’s Seventh Framework authorities shortly before independence and, after commu- Programme for Research and Technological Development. nal conservancies were established under the Nature 1996 For each of the partners i4Life designed and implemented Conservation Ordinance Amendment of , it was agreed fi the necessary tools, as well as significantly enhancing the that bene ts should go to adjoining conservancies, although Catalogue of Life (www.catalogueoflife.org). government retained responsibility for management. The i4Life project also established a set of tools and A draft policy on concessions in state protected areas was standards for data sharing and cooperation among major developed by the Ministry of Environment and Tourism 2004–2005 2007 biodiversity programmes. Tools developed included a during and approved in . This recognized download service, a cross-mapper for comparing different that one of the main reasons for giving out tourism fi taxonomies and a piping tool that accepts taxa centrally and concessions was to share bene ts with park residents and then ‘pipes’ them out to c. 130 global species checklists for neighbouring communities. Three concessions had already processing (http://www.i4life.eu/i4lifewebsite/col-piping- been allocated in Bwabwata before the policy was approved: 50 tools/). These tools facilitated the cross-referencing of a hunting concession with % of the income going to park the partners’ taxon names with the taxonomically edited residents, and two camp-sites. fi Catalogue of Life list, and a gap analysis of taxonomic The rst tourism concessions under this policy were 2008 2010 coverage among the partners to identify taxa missing from awarded between and , including two sites in the the Catalogue of Life, and helped complete the taxon lists in Hobatere concession area (one with traversing rights in the partners’ taxonomic data. Etosha National Park), one in Etendeka, one in Bwabwata The i4Life project is a major achievement in biodiversity National Park and one in Khaudum National Park. Tourism informatics as it ensures a higher quality of taxonomic data operations in these concessions were to be managed by in the databases of the project’s partners and facilitates the private-sector partners (existing operators in two cases and 75 usability of genetic data resources essential for conducting new operators in the others). Typically % of the income phylogenetically informed conservation strategies such as from the operators goes to the conservancies holding the 25 EDGE. In this regard the European Molecular Biology head concession contract, with the other % going to the Laboratory–European Bioinformatics Institute European Namibian government. Nucleotide Archive has recently developed a marker portal Unfortunately these were awarded as Namibian tourism ff from which phylogenetic marker sequences can be down- was su ering from the global economic crisis and so the loaded (www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/data/warehouse/search). private-sector partners failed to develop three of the sites and another was delayed because of gold exploration next to the lodge site. Only Etendeka remained a viable prospect, STÉPHANE RIVIÈRE Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK, on behalf of the i4Life Consortium and even there the development of a new lodge was E-mail [email protected] considered too high a risk, and so the existing facility was upgraded with funding from the African Safari Lodge I4LIFE CONSORTIUM School of Biological Sciences, University of Foundation and Millennium Challenge Account–Namibia. Reading, Reading, UK Development of the other sites is now underway, thanks in © 2014 Fauna & Flora International, Oryx, 48(3), 325–329 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.19, on 30 Sep 2021 at 02:28:35, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605314000283 328 Conservation news part to the provision of 49% matched funding by forest, Iyondo, is part of the Kilombero Nature Reserve, Millennium Challenge Account–Namibia and the improved which was gazetted in 2007 to allocate upgraded protection financial climate for tourism. status to a number of forest reserves to the west and south In July 2011 three conservancies were given tourism of the Udzungwa Mountains National Park (Oryx, 41, rights over the Palmwag concession, which forms the core of 429–430). Within this protected area Iyondo is the south- 2 Africa’s largest unfenced rhino population. Wilderness westernmost forest patch, with an extension of 28 km , Safaris, which had previously held the concession, now comprising mostly pristine montane moist forest at became sub-concessionaire for the existing Desert Rhino elevations of 1,200–1,900 m. As far as we are aware only Camp and a new camp, and another operator took over the one biological survey has been conducted previously in this existing Palmwag Lodge. forest, targeted mainly at primates. A new set of concessions, awarded in October 2013, Our survey targeted medium–large mammals and forest included two sites in the Skeleton Coast National Park, two birds. For mammals we used camera-trapping and oppor- additional sites in Bwabwata National Park and one in tunistic observations. We deployed 16 digital camera-traps Mamili National Park. Two conservancies on the northern each for a maximum of 40 days, resulting in a total sampling boundary of Etosha National Park were given private effort of 635 camera-days. To maximize captures, cameras gates into the Park and exclusive traversing rights, were set opportunistically along wildlife trails. Forest birds greatly enhancing the value of tourism facilities on the were surveyed using a combination of mist netting and Park boundary. Three of these conservancies have existing observations. Netting was carried out for 7 days, using 12 private-sector partners and the others will need to go 12-m-long nets. After identification the birds were released. through a competitive tender process to find investors. Camera-trapping yielded 2,320 photographs or video- The new concessions should generate c. 250 new full- clips of 12 species of mammals belonging to 11 genera. The time jobs for local people and up to NAD 5 million (USD most significant record was of Abbott’s duiker Cephalophus 500,000) per year in additional income to communal spadix, which was captured on three occasions. This is a conservancies. Approximately 75% of this typically goes to large, Endangered duiker endemic to Tanzania, restricted to supporting operations, including community game guards, a few montane forests, with Udzungwa being considered the and the rest is distributed as benefits in cash or in kind to species’ stronghold (Oryx, 46, 14–15). In Udzungwa Abbott’s conservancy members. duiker occurs in most of the largest forest blocks but is These new concessions will further strengthen Namibia’s known to be heavily hunted in unprotected sites, and thus communal conservancies, generally acknowledged to be the this additional record is of considerable conservation most successful example of community-based natural relevance. Among the other forest mammals detected was resource management in Africa. This is timely as the Lowe’s servaline genet Genetta servalina lowei, which was concessions in the Skeleton Coast National Park and captured on camera-traps on 14 separate occasions. This Palmwag Concession Area will provide additional income genet subspecies is endemic to moist