Human Interaction
The human population pressure is fairly low in the region; the villages mainly are along the southwestern and northern boundaries of the Park. Nutritionally, the villagers obtain most of their carbohydrates from manioc and banana plantations, and protein from bushmeat. Most of the monetary economy of the villagers who are not directly employed by the conservation project ECOFAC revolves around bushmeat (capture and sale), and to a lesser extent, production and sale of local alcohol. Some collection, use and sale of other forest products (caterpillars, nuts, lianas etc.) is carried out, but economically this is much less important than bushmeat. More recently (post 1996) logging concessions are now active around all sides of the park except the west, and many people have found employment in the timber companies.
The major problems in terms of conservation for the region are elephant poaching (for ivory) and hunting of other animals for the commercial bushmeat trade. Elephant hunting was greatly reduced for a while with the implantation of a conservation project (ECOFAC), due to their antipoaching activities. However due to the rising price of ivory poaching has risen again. In 2011 the African Parks Network took over management of the site.
Read more about this topic: Odzala National Park
Famous quotes containing the words human and/or interaction:
“The division between the useful arts and the fine arts must not be understood in too absolute a manner. In the humblest work of the craftsmen, if art is there, there is a concern for beauty, through a kind of indirect repercussion that the requirements of the creativity of the spirit exercise upon the production of an object to serve human needs.”
—Jacques Maritain (1882–1973)
“UG [universal grammar] may be regarded as a characterization of the genetically determined language faculty. One may think of this faculty as a ‘language acquisition device,’ an innate component of the human mind that yields a particular language through interaction with present experience, a device that converts experience into a system of knowledge attained: knowledge of one or another language.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)