Enhancing nature-based tourism to improve wildlife conservation in Southern Africa: a synthetic review

Wildlife is an essential resource for ecosystem balance, yet natural and anthropogenic forces in Southern Africa threaten its conservation. Due to wildlife over-exploitation, fauna conservation is at an embryonic stage in Southern Africa, and achieving ecological-related sustainable development goals is difficult in the region. Poaching of iconic species, human-wildlife conflicts and extinction rates are at their peak in the area, but there is a dearth of information regarding wildlife conservation. However, achieving a sustainable tourism industry requires adequate information about wildlife conservation, exploitation, and nature-based tourism. Several studies have been conducted regarding biodiversity management, but most of them have focused less on enhancing nature-based tourism. Recognising the situation, this review article aims to endorse nature-based tourism to control wildlife exploitation and extinction in the region through a synthetic literature review by utilising the existing published and grey literature from authentic and accredited multidisciplinary Scopus, ScienceDirect, Google Scholar databases and organisations websites. The significant findings revealed that wildlife depletion, including rare species, is primarily attributed to trophy hunting, poverty-driven poaching and partial ratification of international and regional biodiversity protocols duplicated by climate change and the erection of wildlife corridors that restrict animal seasonal migration, thereby causing deaths by impairing fauna survival capacities. Consequently, the study proffers a framework with multi-layered interventions to enhance transboundary wildlife management from community, national, and regional levels through nature-based tourism characterised by anti-poaching and anti-trophy hunting. The framework considers various regional and international sustainable development blueprints to encourage harmonised wildlife conservation at the regional level. The framework developed will serve as a comprehensive tool to assist communities, policymakers, law enforcers, national park agencies, governments and NGOs in the effective planning, strategy implementation and management of wildlife tourism with minimum consumption. By providing a structured approach, the framework will enable these stakeholders to collaborate efficiently and make informed decisions that prioritise the long-term conservation of wildlife. It aims to prevent rapid population decline through sustainable management practices, ensuring that both biodiversity and local economies can thrive while safeguarding future generations of wildlife.