Humans | Kibale Ecology and Conservation Project

Socio-Ecological Dynamics and the Human Dimensions of Conservation

Thu, 06 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Description and Project Aims

The success of any global biodiversity plan is ultimately decided at the local level. While national parks like Kibale are critical for preserving ecosystems, their very existence creates a complex socio-economic landscape for the “frontline” communities living on their borders. The costs of protecting biodiversity often fall disproportionately on these local populations, who frequently face a cascade of challenges:

Livelihood Impacts: Restrictions on accessing traditional forest resources.
Direct Conflict: Significant crop and property damage from wildlife, as well as threats to human safety.
Health & Security: Heightened exposure to zoonotic disease transmission at the human-wildlife interface.
Economic Disparity: Limited development opportunities that can be overshadowed by the conservation-focused economy.

Recognizing that conservation cannot succeed if it ignores these human dimensions, our lab maintains a long-term socio-ecological monitoring program around Kibale National Park. This is not a one-time study but an ongoing commitment to understanding the real-world, lived experience of conservation.

The core aim of this project is to track and contextualize how conservation strategies impact community well-being over time. We employ a multi-faceted approach to build a holistic picture:

Community-Level Monitoring: We conduct regular, structured household surveys to gather longitudinal data on livelihoods, food security, economic well-being, health, and local perceptions of conservation and its managing bodies.
Policy Analysis: We actively track and analyze policy changes at all scales—from local park management rules and national-level government directives (e.g., from the Uganda Wildlife Authority) to the influence of international conservation frameworks.

By connecting these “bottom-up” community realities with “top-down” policy decisions, our research provides critical feedback to both scientists and policymakers. This work helps identify pathways for more equitable conservation, ensuring that the human communities who are the primary stewards of these landscapes are not left bearing the cost of global biodiversity goals.

Contact Information

Dipto Sarkar

Disease Ecology

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Description and Project Aims

Animals evolved into a world dominated by microbes. Animals maintain relationships with many of these microorganisms, but in some cases they can have a detrimental impact on an animal’s fitness. Our rapidly changing world is creating new interactions between species, including with humans, and creates new opportunities for transmission and the ecology of pathogens. Indeed, most emerging pathogens in human’s and their livestock have their origins in wildlife, and understanding what factors increase the risk of spillover into humans is an essential component of improving prevention efforts. This project aims to provide data towards understanding the ecology of pathogens in their natural hosts, in their rapidly changing natural ecosystems, and ultimately to understand changing human contact to wildlife. We broadly apply an evolutionary community ecology framework for this work and collaborate closely with the Uganda Wildlife Authority.

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Human-Wildlife Interactions

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Project Description and Aims

Human-wildlife conflict is one of the most pressing and complex challenges at the intersection of conservation biology and sustainable development. As human populations and agricultural lands expand into areas bordering protected habitats, interactions between people and wildlife are intensifying, often with severe consequences. Our research program addresses one of the most critical forms of this challenge: human-elephant conflict (HEC). Across Africa and Asia, crop-raiding by elephants poses a direct threat to the food security, economic stability, and safety of rural communities, which in turn can erode local support for conservation and lead to retaliatory killings of elephants.

The core aim of this long-term research is to move beyond simply documenting conflict to systematically understanding its underlying drivers. We operate on the premise that conflict events are not random; they are predictable behaviors shaped by a complex interplay of elephant ecology, animal learning, resource availability, and the structure of human landscapes. Our lab uses an interdisciplinary approach that integrates advanced geospatial science—including satellite remote sensing, GIS modeling, and spatial statistics—with rich, long-term datasets gathered through on-the-ground behavioral observations and collaboration with local community partners.

This project seeks to answer the fundamental questions of why and where conflict hotspots emerge and persist. We investigate how elephant decision-making is influenced by factors like landscape connectivity, the distribution and nutritional quality of preferred crops, the presence and effectiveness of physical barriers, and seasonal environmental changes. By identifying the specific landscape features and social-ecological dynamics that either attract elephants or fail to deter them, we can pinpoint critical vulnerabilities and opportunities for intervention.

Ultimately, the objective of this program is to provide the actionable, evidence-based science needed for effective, spatially-informed coexistence strategies. Rather than promoting one-size-fits-all solutions, our research helps conservation managers and local communities allocate limited resources to the right places. This can inform the design of smarter, more efficient mitigation tools, from the strategic reinforcement of barrier systems and the implementation of community-based early-warning systems in high-risk corridors, to informing land-use planning that better balances agricultural needs with wildlife movement. Our work strives to find sustainable pathways that protect human livelihoods while securing a future for elephant populations in increasingly human-dominated landscapes.

Contact Information

Dipto Sarkar