Example of traps that poacher use to kill big animals.

This research project “assessment of major factors influencing continuous poaching and their impact on the conservation of nyungwe national park “will be conducted in Nyungwe National Park/RWANDA and its surrounding communities. Both secondary and primary data will be used secondary data include the review of ranger based monitoring data to come up with data of poacher arrested in last five years(2013-2017) , whereby primary Data will be collected from the sample households through interviews using a structured questionnaire and focus group discussion guided by a checklist of questionnaires. The questions to be asked will be include but not limit to: what extent does community proximity to Nyungwe National Park influence continuous poaching ,what extent does poverty influence continuous poaching ,what are the main actors involved in the continuous poaching ,value of bush meat consumed and sold by the households ,various sources of households income and what are the impact of poaching on the conservation of Nyungwe National Park then other questions relating to the demography and socio-economic conditions of the respondents like sex, age, household size, education status, occupation and social category will also be considered.

The questionnaire will be administrated by the interviewer and both male and females will be given equal chance while selecting respondent in household. One focus group discussions will be carried out with Nyungwe National Park staff gender balance in terms of participants will be respected in order to ensure that all sex, age class are represented.

Both descriptive and analytical (inferential) statistics will be used for data analysis. Descriptive statistics including the frequency, percentages, and bar chart will be used to summarize the major factors influencing the poaching in Nyungwe National Park. Data collected during focus group will be summarized using descriptive statistics and will be further used to help draw inferences for the general results from household interview.

We are expecting from this project research activities the following conservation outputs:

-to come up with the identification of the major factors the influence continuous poaching

-to come up with the knowledge of the categories of people mainly involved in the continuous poaching in Nyungwe National Park

And then a strong understanding on the perception of the local community on the negative impact of continuous poaching in the Nyungwe National Park.