Assessment of local communities’ perceptions toward common hippopotamus conservation around the Pendjari Biosphere Reserve, Benin (West Africa)

Understanding local communities’ perception about conservation can provide useful information that could be incorporated into decision-making processes and lead to resolution of conflicts between local people and protected area officials by improving attitudes and altering behavior of the local people. This study seeks to evaluate the local communities’ perceptions towards hippopotamus conservation outside the Pendjari Biosphere Reserve (PBR) in northern Benin. Data were collected from 2018 to 2019 throughout twenty-three (23) villages around the Pendjari Biosphere Reserve during the wet season through semi-structured interviews and informal talks with 192 respondents from different socio-professional backgrounds. Local community perception towards the hippopotamus was measured with hippopotamus role as spiritual, tourism, ecological (positive perception), and nothing (negative perception). With regard to result, only 26% of questionnaire respondents recognized benefits of hippopotamus against 57% who did not recognize any benefit from hippopotamus conservation and 17% were unsure. Local communities’ perceptions of the benefits of hippopotamus conservation, decrease progressively as moving farther from the PBR (ß= -0.99; p<0.001). In villages near Pendjari Biosphere Reserve, people have a positive perception towards hippopotamus. The most commonly cited benefit was that the common hippopotamus plays important spiritual and ecological roles, and also attracted tourists to the area. Further from the Pendjari Biosphere Reserve, many respondents have negative perception about hippopotamus. The most common reasons cited for why the hippopotamus was not beneficial included their relative uselessness, the potential danger for human, and the damage they caused to crops. Education of local communities located further from the Pendjari Biosphere Reserve remains a real challenge for the species survival. The manager of the Pendjari Biosphere Reserve together with the forester administration of the Atacora Department should create and sustain community awareness programs that promote human-hippopotamus relationship.