Zeitschrift für Ökosystem und Ökologie

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Wildlife Habitat Suitability Analysis at Serengeti National Park (SNP), Tanzania Case Study Loxodonta sp

John Erasto Sanare, Eltaib S Ganawa and Abdelrahim AM Salih

Wildlife management is an issue of global importance where its habitat suitability mapping is an essential for the better management, conservation and protection of these valuable species such as elephants, in Serengeti National park in Tanzania where the environmental, physical and socio-economic structure are not efficiently well managed and monitored, there is highly habitat loss and fragmentation due to various reasons includes the expansion of farms, extension of roads in the remote areas, projects like dams, mines or commercial agriculture like oil-palm plantation. These have decreased the source of food and shelter for elephants. Further the human encroachment has destroyed the corridors of elephants which enabled access to seasonal movement for food, water and salt, also there is decline in elephant species due to hunting, poaching of ivory, In addition other body parts such as bone, hide, hair and teeth are highly valuable for making ornaments. That’s leads the wildlife-human conflicts. In this study, the Analytic Hierarchy process (AHP) and overlay weight analysis in GIS software where used to generate the elephants suitability maps for t the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. Total of five factors that contribute to the wildlife habitat suitability namely rivers, roads, forests, woodlands and grassing and bush lands where integrated in GIS and AHP was applied to rate the individual classes of the each factor and weight the impact of one factor against the other to determine the weighted contribution of importance to the wildlife habitat suitability, Basically all the five contributing factors for wildlife habitat suitability where converted into raster and combine by using weight Overlays in Arcmap with weights from the AHP which a based on the distribution of each class of habitat factors to generate the final thematic map for elephants suitable habitat map, Finally the thematic map overlaid habitat analysis showed open tress at least (65-40%) crown cover to forest was the most important habitat factor considered elephant in habitat analysis , The forest factor needed to protect body, reproduction area and feeding elephant could not stay long term in open area, they needed close forest for protection, resting and sleeping. Conclusively the methodology applied for this study was successfully and it could be adopted in similar environments. GIS and Remote Sensing technologies proved feasible for the wildlife habitat suitability mapping.