CONFLICTING INTEREST OF SAFARI JEEP OPERATORS AND ITS IMPACT ON WILDLIFE CONSERVATION WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO YALA NATIONAL PARK

Abstract

Yala national park is key hub of the tourism industry in Sri Lanka. But in recent years, the Yala national park occurs conservation conflict in between park management and other stakeholders. Therefore, the park management will not be able to achieve the conservation objective within this context. The study mainly focused about the conservation conflict issues and challengers and strategies to the park management to minimize these issues. The respondent represented from the wildlife conservation department and local community. They are former director general, assistant director, park warden, hoteliers, tour operators, politicians, safari jeep operators and visitors. The data collected from 11 respondents under the snowball sampling as a single case study and inductive approach. The data collected through semi-structured telephone interview. The study researcher revealed that conservation conflict issues as safari jeep drives drive in high speed, accident the wild animals, horn and yell the animals, violate the park rules and regulation. Because of this reason, park management have to face the challengers in minimizing this issue. The study revealed that political pressure, poverty, lack of institutional capacity, lack of financial resources were major challengers of park management. Park management could be introduced strategies as cancelling the licence from the safari jeep operators, giving the awareness programme to safari jeep operators regarding the wildlife conservation, giving leaflets to the visitors in mentioning about endanger species as well government could be target the real wildlife tourists.