Challenges of Natural Resources Conservation Management in Mekit Ecotourism Sites, Ethiopia

Abstract

This study tried toinvestigate major challenges of natural resources conservation management in Mekit from local governments, local communities, community project managers, cultureand tourism office experts. A total of 188 purposively and systematically selected respondents using simple random and snowball sampling technique to gather quantitative and qualitative data. Both primary and secondary data were collected through semi-structured interviews, questionnaires,FGDand documents. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistical analysis with the help of SPSS version 22 to investigate major challenges of natural resources conservation management. Regardless of Mekitis rich with a variety of natural resources;it has been highly challenged due to agricultural land expansion, deforestation and population expansion. Mean and standard deviation values of respondents showed that ecotourism site of Mekit has been still affected by illegal hunting, local communities have no sense of ownership, free grazing, human wildlife conflict, land ownership problems, involuntary evacuation of local communities from their site, less government participation, poor collaboration and coordination among stakeholders. Thus, all relevant stakeholders shall capitalize on natural resources conservation initiatives whilst strongly working on challenges of natural resources conservation management to encourage sustainable livelihoods development of Mekitin particular and Ethiopia in general.