Abstract:
The main goal of this project was to check whether conservation education offered to the communities living with wildlife around Tsavo West National Park had changed their view on the wildlife resources. Changing the attitude and perception of the local community living around protected areas may be difficult to some point because most of the local communities living around the park used wildlife as source of food, fuel and wood for crafting. Tsavo West National Park is bordered by the Maasai, Taita and Kamba communities, in which both the Kamba and Taita communities were hunters, a thing that posed a major threat to the rare wildlife species in Tsavo West National Park. The main objectives of the project was to determine the effectiveness of conservation education to Tsavo National Park. The specific objectives include: to determine students and local community members level of environmental conservation awareness, to find out whether field trips and students visit to the Education Centre in Tsavo West National Park help had impacted on the attitude and perception of the locals towards conservation and to find out whether conservation education skills and knowledge to locals and schools were practiced through protecting the environment and natural resources around them. The data collection methods which were used included interviews and questionnaires. These were used to collect data from both the community members and high school students whom were the target population of the research project. Varied results were expected on completion of the research project. It was expected that positive effects of conservation education to observed through decreased cases of animal poaching, charcoal burning, human wildlife conflicts, clean environment that was free of pollution and cutting down of endangered tree species for crafting. The reason behind it was because students and local community members were receiving conservation education from Tsavo West National Park department of education but less was known about the effectiveness of their efforts. The research findings were used to determine the effectiveness of conservation education on the attitudes of students and local community members around the park.
