dc.description.abstract | Involving the community within which a wildlife conservation has been regarded as a key factor in resolving conflicts between humans and wildlife and creating a management that ensures that the benefits due to future generations from wildlife is not compromised. Thus, the study examined the interaction between community involvement and performance of wildlife conservation projects with reference to Laikipia County. Specifically, the focus of the study was determining how community involvement in project identification, design, implementation as well as the monitoring and evaluation phases on performance of wildlife conservation projects. The community development theory, stakeholder theory and the program theory provided anchorage to the study. A descriptive design was adopted. Information for this study was gathered from primary sources with aid of questionnaires and interview guides. Inferential data included correlation and regression analysis. A total of 144 respondents including managers, community leaders, community, members and NEMA official from Loisaba Community Trust in Laikipia County were targeted. The target population was stratified into four groupings, the managers from the community trust, the community leaders, community members and NEMA officials. The researcher picked the managers on a snow-balling method, where one manager of conservancy participated in the study and point to the next conservancy manager until all the 5 were reached, the same was done for community leaders, community members and NEMA officials. Content analysis was done on the open-ended questionnaires. The work was presented using figures and tables. It was shown that community involvement in project identification (p=0.000<0.05); community involvement in project design (p=0.003<0.05); community involvement in project implementation p=0.018<0.05) and community involvement in project monitoring and evaluation (p=0.000<0.05) all have positive and significant effect on performance of wildlife conservation projects. The study concludes that community involvement positively and significantly predicts the ability of projects to perform. It 8is recommended that the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) should make it compulsory for all wildlife conservation projects to state how they would involve the community at the identification stage before approval. There should specific legislations requiring all projects in Kenya to involve the community at the design phase before they are approved by NEMA and other relevant bodies. All project managers and other practitioners in the field of Project Planning and Management should realize the need to involve the community in the implementation of projects so as to improve on performance of their projects. | en_US |