Tourism Status and Sources of Income to Local Communities Amidst COVID-19 Pandemic and Its Implications in Biodiversity Conservation in Burunge Wildlife Management Area in Tanzania

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in various negative repercussions worldwide in terms of biological conservation, the tourism sector and socioeconomic welfare. The purpose of this study was to assess and understand the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on socio-economic activities, income from the tourism sector, alternative sources of income adapted by the local communities adjacent to the Burunge Wildlife Management Area (WMA) as a means of survival, and its implications for biodiversity conservation. To assess tourism status, socio-economic activities and alternative livelihoods, interviews, semi-structured questionnaires, focus group discussions (FGDs), and key informants’ consultations were conducted on 264 respondents, of whom 53% (n = 140) were men and 47% (n = 124) were women. Secondary data were synthesized from soft and hard copy reports through an extensive literature search in order to comprehend the implications of COVID-19 and alternative livelihoods in biodiversity conservation. as sh farming and beekeeping, to reduce the impacts of unanticipated crises such as COVID-19.


Introduction
The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic is one of the world's greatest shocks. The rst instance of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)-caused sickness was detected in Wuhan, China, in December 2020 (Neupane, 2020). The spread of this virus has become considerably more dangerous, resulting in signi cant mortality and other health problems not only in Wuhan but also in Hubei Province and other parts of the world (Bennett et al., 2020;Wang et al., 2020) The World Health Organization (WHO) o cially declared COVID-19 as a global pandemic on March 11, 2020 (Neupane, local residents adjacent to the protected areas to earn income for their living during the COVID-19 pandemic and its implications for biodiversity conservation (ecological impact). Therefore, there is a need for more extensive studies to explore the aforementioned issues for the well-being of not only protected areas but also local communities adjacent to the protected areas.
The aim of this research was to assess and understand the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the tourism industry and the socio-economic activities of local communities around the Burunge WMA. In addition, the study stresses the understanding of alternative sources of income adapted by local communities to survive during COVID-19 and their implications for biodiversity conservation. This study is important because it provides basic data on the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic's socioeconomic repercussions while emphasizing the numerous alternative sources of revenue used by community members adjacent to the Burunge WMA during the crisis. The results of this research will assist responsible authorities and communities in adopting effective approaches and strategies to prevent the effects of unexpected tragedies such as COVID-19, as well as modify some policies for the interest of protected areas and nearby local communities.

Study area
This study was conducted across three selected villages that were purposefully selected, namely, Kakoi, Maweni, and Mwada found in the Burunge Wildlife Management Area (WMA) within the Tarangire-Manyara Ecosystem (TME). The villages that were included in this study bene ted from the Burunge WMA directly or indirectly. The Burunge WMA has a size of 617 km 2 , of which 280 km 2 , is reserved for conservation activities. The Burunge WMA is found in the Tarangire-Manyara Ecosystem (TME) between latitude 3.94°S to 3.66°S and longitude 35.73°E to 35.97°E in the Babati district in the Manyara region ( gure 1) (Kiffner et al., 2020;WWF, 2014). This area records a temperature of approximately 180°C to 330°C with alternating seasons (dry, long, and short) of 400 to 500mm rainfall annually at an elevation of 1,000m from the sea level. The types of plants that dominated the area include edaphic grasslands, riverine vegetation, and Acacia woodlands. There are mainly two ethnic groups that are dominant around the Burunge WMA: Mbugwe which are agro-pastoralists and Maasai, which are pastoralists (Kaswamila, The sample population used in this study was selected from three villages around Burunge WMA. A total sample size of 264 respondents was selected from three villages (Kakoi = 79,Maweni = 68,and Mwada = 117). The sample size used was at least 5% of the entire population projected for this study, as suggested by NIST (2020). Under the consent and guidance of local government authorities, the number of respondents from each study area was determined by considering the population size of the village. The respondents were selected from each study village, and a list of villagers was provided by local government leaders in each village. Each member in a list was numbered, and random selection was performed using the random function from the excel sheet "= RAND ()" to obtain the individual (household) to be recruited for the interview. Semi-structured questionnaires were used to collect data from the selected respondents. Respondents were those aged 18 years and above, with the assumption that in this age category, a respondent will be involved in a particular socioeconomic activity to earn income. Furthermore, focus group discussions (FGDs) were held intensively with a group of at least four respondents to obtain more information on the speci c issue. The questions asked in the focused group discussion were those provided in the questionnaire, although exibility was allowed to ensure that more information was captured from the respondents. In addition, comprehensive information on this study was gathered from key informants. The recruited key informants included 3 Burunge WMA leaders, 2 local government leaders, 3 conservationists in the Tarangire Manyara Ecosystem and 2 rangers. The information gathered from the respondents, focus group discussions (FGDs), and key informants were about socio-economic status during the COVID-19 pandemic, alternative sources of income during the COVID-19 pandemic, the status of the tourism sector and conservation during COVID-19, and any report regarding the impact of COVID-19 on biodiversity (mostly for key informants). In addition, an extensive and systematic literature review was conducted to explore the anticipated impact of COVID-19 on biodiversity conservation, income from the tourism sector, in agreement with the objectives of this study.

Socio-economic status during the COVID-19 pandemic
For each respondent, a semi-structured questionnaire was provided to collect data on the socio-economic activities they engaged in. Friendly socio-economic activities are signi cant in the conservation of biodiversity and any negative shift of local communities to other activities as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic is anticipated to cause problems in these areas. The socio-economic activities practiced by the respondents were collected from each village. In the questionnaire, the effects of COVID-19 on the socioeconomic practices of the respondents were inquired from each respondent. To increase the scope of the explored issue, intensive focus group discussions (FGDs) were held with each group having not less than four respondents.

Alternative sources of income during the COVID-19 pandemic
From the semi-structured questionnaires provided to the respondents, focus group discussions (FGDs) and key informants, information on the alternative sources of income adapted by the local communities as a means of survival during the COVID-19 pandemic was acquired. The alternative sources of income were those activities that the local communities decided to go and practice; speci cally those whose former sources of income were disrupted by COVID-19. The alternative sources of income considered here were: agriculture, shing, livestock keeping, Boda-Boda (motorcycle taxis), restaurants, and other small-to-medium enterprises.

The status of tourism sector and conservation during COVID-19
More information was sought from respondents and key informants to better understand the status of COVID-19 in the WMA management area. Respondents were asked if the number of tourists in the study area was increasing, decreasing, or stable, particularly during the COVID-19 crisis. The classi cation for rating the number of tourists observed was very low (1-9 tourists observed per week), low (10-29 tourists observed per week), high (30-49 tourists observed per week), and very high (50 and above tourists observed per week). The respondents were asked to rate the number of tourists observed during COVID-19 and pre-COVID-19. In this case, the time for COVID-19 was March-May 2020, when the disease was declared and many countries practiced the so-called lockdown, while pre-COVID-19 was March-May 2019, when people were free and there was no declared COVID-19 and lockdown.

Implication and impact of COVID-19 on biodiversity conservation (Ecological impact)
An extensive review of both online and printed information was systematically done (Khan et al., 2003;McDonagh et al., 2000). During the search for the required documents, language was not a barrier or restriction. Some of the key words, as shown in Table 1 below, were used to enable the acquaintance of relevant literature for this study on both the internet and printed documents. To obtain the targeted studies for review, search engines including Google scholar (https://scholar.google.com/), BASE (https://www.base-search.net/) and Research Gate (https://www.researchgate.net) were employed, while a manual search was conducted to search the information from printed documents, including proceedings, o cial government reports, posters and other publications that were not available on the internet during the review. The explored and required information in the reviewed literature was about biodiversity conservation, human biodiversity interaction and the anticipated ecological impact of COVID-19 on the conservation of biological diversity. The data on income generated by Burunge WMA were collected from secondary data, speci cally the report kept by the WMA management from 2006 to 2021. The data included the total revenue collected each year. The purpose of collecting this information was to understand the trend of revue collection and point out the effect of COVID-19 on revenue or income collection by WMA management. The time of COVID-19 in this trend was 2019/2020 and 2020/2021. The sources of income include nes, hunting and photographic tourism, with the tourism sector contributing 99% of the total collected revenue.

Data analysis
Microsoft Excel® (Microsoft Corporation, Washington, USA) was used to record, classify, and organize the collected data. The analysis was performed using SYSTAT (Version 13.2 Inc. 2017) (http://www.systat.com) at a signi cance level of 0.05. A non-parametric statistical test (Kruskal-Wallis statistical test or Mann-Whitney U test) was used to test the variation of variables such as, the information obtained on the socio-economic activities of the respondents, the number of tourists before and during COVID-19 on tourists, and the alternative sources of income adapted by the local communities adjacent to the Burunge WMA during the COVID-19 pandemic as a means of survival. Other descriptive statistics including, percentage and cross-tabulation were also used. In addition, graphs, tables, and charts were included to present a large amount of data in a detailed and simple manner.

Results
3.1. Socio-demographic pro le of respondents A total of 264 respondents from the three study areas were considered for participation in the study, of which 79, 68, and 117 respondents were selected from Kakoi, Maweni, and Mwada villages, respectively. There were 140 male respondents (53%), and 124 female respondents (47%) in the survey. Kakoi village had a large percentage of male participants with 62% (n=49) as compared to other villages whereas the number of female participants was higher in Maweni village with 51.5% (n=35). The variation observed in gender distribution among the three study villages was not signi cant (Kruskal-Wallis Test Statistic = 3.872, P = 0.144). In the case of age groups, the youth group dominated the population with 79.9% (n=211) followed by the adult group 17.8% (n=47). Maweni village had a large percentage of youths with 91.2% (n=62) and Kakoi was the least with 64.6% (n=51). The percentage of the old group across the three study villages was the smallest with a total of 2.3% (n=6). The variation in age groups across the three study villages was signi cant (Kruskal-Wallis Test Statistic = 17.118, P <0.01). In addition to the collected information, the education level of respondents was also recorded, whereby a large number of respondents had primary education (44.7%, n = 118), followed by secondary education (40.2%, n = 106), tertiary education (10.2%, n = 27), and 4.9% (n = 13) for informal education. The Kruskal-Wallis test showed that the distribution of education levels across the study villages was not signi cant (Kruskal-Wallis Test Statistic = 5.967, P = 0.051) ( Table 2).

Socio-economic activities versus COVID-19 pandemic
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was experienced by a large number of respondents in the three study sites, with 90.5% (n=239) of all respondents agreeing that COVID-19 had an impact on their livelihoods, while only 9.5% (n=25) claimed COVID-19 had no impact on their livelihoods. The impacts caused by the COVID-19 pandemic were mainly; de ation which leads to low income 91.7% (n=242), losing jobs 5.7% (n=15), and decline in the number of customers 91.7% (n=242), each one was calculated out of the total number of respondents. The percentage of respondents who lost their jobs due to COVID-19 was higher in Mwada village with 7.7% (n=9) than in other villages. Of the respondents, 97.2% (n=66) reported a decline in income, Maweni village had the highest proportion, while Mwada village had the lowest, with 87.2% (n=102), with no signi cant variation across the three study villages (Kruskal-Wallis Test Statistic = 3.182, P = 0.204) ( Table 3).  3.5. The status of tourism sector and conservation during COVID-19 The number of tourists owing in the country particularly in the Burunge WMA declined sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic compared to a few years back. According to their observations, 96.2% (n = 254) respondents argued that the number of tourists before COVID-19 was high, whereas 3% (n=8) and 0.8% (n=2) were for those who said the number of tourists was very high and others didn't know respectively with the variation being not signi cant across the three study areas (Kruskal-Wallis Test Statistic = 0.156, P = 0.925). In the same regard, 94.3% (n=249) of respondents agreed that the number of tourists observed during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis was low compared to some months back, while 4.5% (n=12) were for the respondents who said the number of tourists was very low and 1.1% (n=3) for those who didn't know. The variation in responses across the three study villages was not signi cant (Kruskal-Wallis Test Statistic = 0.089, P = 0.956) ( Table 5). The evidence from the reviewed literature shows that the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on biological diversity conservation can be directly or indirectly caused by several factors and seen in different ways and perspectives (Figure 4). Some of the effects caused by the COVID-19 pandemic include habitat destruction and conversion, an increase in human-wildlife con ict, and the transmission of zoonotic diseases due to an increase in human, wildlife, and livestock interaction (Table 6).  Shoo et al., 2021;Walters et al., 2021)

Socio-demographic pro le of respondents
In this study, the percentage of male respondents was 6% higher than that of the female respondents. The marginal difference observed was because men are in most African cultures the heads of the families and engage in any matter involving decision making, inputs, or any other contribution (George et al., 2016). The ndings showed that, the dominant age group among the respondents was the youth group as compared to the other groups. It was observed that, a large number of individuals in this age group were more involved in different socioeconomic activities than the others. At the age of 18-40 years, a person becomes energetic and capable of performing several duties e ciently under minimal supervision. This age group has been referred to as more active and productive in society because of its contribution of doing various activities for the welfare of their own families as well as the local communities (URT, 2006). According to Morar & Peterlicean (2012), the complexity of environmental problems can be mitigated by re-channeling education to the youth group on the importance and usefulness of nature to stimulate sustainable development in both conservation issues and local communities' livelihoods. In addition, Nadeson & Barton (2014) argued that youth are innovative, continually growing, problem solving oriented, passionate and knowledgeable; thus, investing in them would bring about a huge positive impact on conservation of biodiversity and improvement of livelihoods in societies. The majority of respondents had a primary education level followed by a secondary education level as it is in most families of farmers and pastoralists in many African countries and Tanzania in particular. The ndings in this study suggest the need and importance of educating and empowering youth groups for the bene t of society as well as the conservation of wildlife and natural resources as they are the main custodians of the protected areas in agreement with other studies (Morar & Peterlicean, 2012;Nadeson & Barton, 2014).

Socio-economic characteristics of the respondents
The ndings from the study revealed that the majority of the surveyed residents adjacent to the Burunge WMA were undertaking different types of activities, however, farming, shing, and cattle keeping were the predominant means of generating pro t. The socio-economic activities varied slightly from one village to another. For example, most of the individuals in Mwada village were farmers, while those in Kakoi and Maweni were engaged in livestock husbandry and farming practices. The variation in socio-economic activities encountered between the three areas of study was possibly in uenced by multiple factors, such as the proportion of a certain age category over the other, the availability and accessibility of land for agricultural purposes, and pastures as well as the proximity of a speci c area to the protected area. This is in agreement with earlier studies conducted in villages surrounding protected and conserved areas in many places particularly Tanzania. For instance, a study by Kaswamila (2009) in the Esilalei, Barabarani, and Migombani villages within the Tarangire-Manyara ecosystem indicated that the primary socioeconomic activities in these locations are subsistence farming, cattle husbandry, and other tourism-based activities. Moreover, research conducted in villages near Saadani National Park (SANAPA) indicated that many indigenous and local societies situated near protected and conserved areas depend largely on agricultural practices and livestock keeping, and that the observed variation among such villages was in uenced by the size of the local people's landholdings and the geographical location of the speci c villages to the parklands (Komba et al., 2021;Mmbaga et al., 2021;Moshi, 2016).

Socio-economic activities versus COVID-19 pandemic
The three research areas faced the misery of the COVID-19 pandemic in their socio-economic activities.
The study reveals that the local communities located adjacent to the protected areas encountered several issues, including a decrease in the number of customers and de ation, leading to reduced income in nearly the same range throughout the three study villages. It was further noticed that in Mwada village, the percentage of individuals who had lost their jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic was greater in comparison to the other surveyed places. The reason underlying this was the dependence of local communities on the tourism industry and other WMA-linked activities. Similar results have been reported in other countries and worldwide. For example, research performed in ve selected WMAs indicated that nearly all the tour operators at Ikona WMA lost their jobs as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, whereas the same has been noticed in Enduimet, Randiren, Burunge, and Makao WMA where some workers, particularly those paid by the local communities, were given leave without receiving their wages, while others were working on loans (Shoo et al., 2021). Further results in Malawi have shown that a huge number of local communities involved with agriculture, bee-keeping, and shing suffered signi cantly as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. The decline in the number of visitors in protected areas in Malawi due to the COVID-19 pandemic, who were the main buyers of honey and other commodities, resulted in a downturn in sales in the market, thus signi cantly affecting their lives (Attah, 2021). Furthermore, research performed by Kideghesho et al (2021), noticed that the majority of people operating in the informal economy around protected zones had reduced demand, sales, and market for their commodities.

Alternative sources of income during the COVID-19 pandemic
As a mechanism for survival during the COVID-19 juncture, community members had to discover new means of earning income for their livelihoods. In Kakoi, Maweni, and Mwada villages, people shifted to other alternative approaches for their lives, including farming, livestock husbandry, and shing while others engaged in Boda-Boda (Motorcycle taxis), restaurants, and other enterprises. Others had no alternative sources of earning income; the scenario described by FAO (2020) caused people to break several regulations and rules to sustain their livelihoods. The study found that the abovementioned activities captured the attention of many because they were the only available ways of generating pro ts for the indigenous and local people besides the protected areas during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, the aforementioned activities were among the most familiar socio-economic tasks performed by many local communities, and thus most had prior experience on how to operate and run them accordingly. The ndings revealed that the repercussions caused by COVID-19 on income and sales in markets led to the minimal collection of personal revenues; hence, they were not capable of providing all basic requirements for their families. Uncontrolled livestock keeping and intensive farming among other activities have been termed by several studies to be more dangerous for the existence of natural habitats and wildlife species (Seki et al., 2018). The massive ow of people from different places into the local villages as a means to ensure their safety during the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to increase pressure on land use and natural resource exploitation, thereby threatening natural habitats and wildlife growth. For instance, it was observed that a large number of people moved from urban areas to rural areas especially those working in the informal economy to search for alternative means of livelihood . The urban-rural movement of the people tends to increase the population size while the resources are limited; as a result, other residents may engage in illegal activities including poaching and deforestation to earn their living . As supported by Loibooki et al. (2002) and Knapp (2012), the close linkage between the diversi cation of sources of earning income and illegal conduct inside or around protected and conserved areas may induce unfavorable land use/ land change cover thus leading to the destruction of wildlife species and natural habitats.

The status of tourism sector and conservation during COVID-19
The ndings in this study show that, the number of tourists visiting Tanzania declined massively as identi ed by the respondents with little variation between their responses. It was noticed that the number of tourists registered within a week fell from about 300 visitors before the COVID-19 outbreak to at most 9 visitors during this pandemic. These ndings are in agreement with the results obtained by UNWTO (2020a, 2020b), which puts an estimate of about 20-30% fall of tourist arrivals worldwide in the year 2020 compared to 2019 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, the ndings of the survey conducted by Safaribookings.com (2021) revealed a sharp decrease in booking requests from potential customers from different countries across the globe. For instance, there was a decline of more than 75% (> 75%) (184 operators/ 68.7% of all operators) requests in new booking as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak whereas there was an increase of more than 75% (> 75%) in cancellation of existing bookings (134 operators/ 50.0% of all operators) (Safaribookings.com, 2021). The 90% dependence of many WMAs in Tanzania on tourism activities, mainly photographic and hunting tourism (Shoo et al., 2021), deteriorated the conservation issues and other operations of these protected areas in a very destructive way. As such, there is a need to have diversi ed means of collecting revenue rather than relying entirely on tourism. 4.6. Income status during the years (2019-2021) of COVID-19 outbreak in Burunge WMA It was clear from the ndings that the revenue decline halted potential operations in the Burunge WMA.
The reported fall in collected income forced the management to minimize necessary expenditures and focus much more on very sensitive operations such as combating poaching through patrols, although the challenges were still there. For instance, the budget for oil/diesel for patrolling inside and around the WMA was reduced from 3,000,000 (USD 1,302.93) to TZS 1,000,000 (USD 434.31). Burunge WMA depends greatly on mainly photographic and hunting tourism for its revenue. Therefore, the massive decline in the number of tourists due to COVID-19 dragged them into a messy ending. These ndings correspond with those reported by UNWTO (2020aUNWTO ( , 2020c, where a loss of approximately USD 300-450 billion was estimated due to the decline in the number of tourist arrivals worldwide and so does in Tanzania. Moreover the study conducted by Spenceley et al (2021) and Hockings et al (2020) shows that the same situation and fall-down was also experienced by other countries including Indonesia, United States of America and Canada. 4.7. The anticipated impact of COVID-19 on biodiversity conservation (Ecological impact) Apart from having a direct impact on the protected and conserved areas, including WMAs, the COVID-19 pandemic has also indirectly in uenced the likelihood of threatening the survival of several species, the existence and sustainability of their natural habitats. The disturbance and disruption of various socioeconomic activities, especially tourist-dependent local businesses including handcrafting activities, conducted by the local communities adjacent to the protected area (i.e., Burunge WMA), has caused some negative repercussions. A large number of indigenous and local people turned to other activities, including intensive agriculture and livestock keeping, which once conducted inappropriately, become dangerous for the survival of wildlife and their natural habitats (Seki et al., 2018;Spenceley et al., 2021;Walters et al., 2021). Moreover, as highlighted in this study's ndings, the sharp and intense decline in the number of tourists in many protected areas worldwide, and Tanzania in particular, exacerbated the di culties in management and achievement of planned and targeted goals in many ways. The massive loss of revenue as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic led to the failure of several managerial issues and developmental projects not just within the protected area but also in the participating local communities, in agreement with other studies, including those conducted by Kideghesho et al (2021) and Shoo et al (2021). The COVID-19 pandemic has been reported to have nothing to do with the issue of poaching and other illegal activities in the Tarangire-Manyara ecosystem, contrary to what has been found by other studies (Hockings et al., 2020;Waithaka et al., 2021;Walters et al., 2021) in various places around the world where poaching, deforestation, and other illegal activities are reported to increase during this juncture. The reason behind the minimal cases of poaching and other illegal issues may probably be an intensive and total focus, as well as a shift of most WMA's workers on patrols and protection of wildlife and WMA's boundaries during the COVID-19 pandemic, as reported by some leaders from the Burunge WMA Authority. The occurrence of COVID-19 has opened many wildlife sector authorities' and adjacent local communities' eyes to how prepared these sides should always be to minimize the effects of unanticipated disasters like COVID-19.

Implication in biodiversity conservation
COVID-19 has revealed the resilience level of most protected and conserved areas in Tanzania and worldwide. The COVID-19 outbreak has led to severe consequences for both protected areas and the local population, relying on numerous activities taking place alongside these areas. The study found that some individuals were employed in the tourism sector, while others were involved in different informal socioeconomic activities within and around the WMA to make a living (Shoo et al., 2021). The interruption of the tourism sector has thus caused considerable di culties in dealing with various circumstances in protected areas and neighboring local people, which face numerous animal conservation challenges, particularly by delegating their plots of land for conservation and enduring several cases caused by wildlife in their communities. The ndings of the study revealed that the shift of local communities to alternative forms of revenue signi ed the start of a new episode in wildlife protection, particularly after discovering that agriculture, shing, and livestock keeping, among other things, were the most popular alternative means of income adopted by communities during the COVID-19 juncture. By examining the effects of these activities on natural ecosystems and the diversity of species (Seki et al., 2018), there is a need to develop a range of methodologies and tactics to mitigate their overall impact on biodiversity.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We acknowledge the technical support provided by the staff of the University of Dodoma and Burunge Wildlife Management Area Authority during data collection and report preparation.

ETHICAL DECLARATION
The University of Dodoma provided ethical clearance for this work, with reference number MA.84/261/02.

INFORMED CONSENT
Informed consent was obtained from individual participant included in the study.

AVAILABILITY OF DATA AND MATERIALS
There is a very close link between local communities' livelihoods and protected areas (Figure 3). Once their sources of income get disrupted, the likelihood of invading and over-exploiting available resources becomes higher but dangerous for wildlife and future generation. According to Ellis (2000), there is a need for the local community to have a diverse source of income that is both socially and environmentally friendly, rather than relying only on tourists to avoid potential biodiversity damage.

Conclusion And Recommendation
The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has had a variety of negative implications in several sectors across the globe. The wildlife industry was also affected by COVID-19's potential consequences, with some operations inside protected areas and among participating communities being halted. The consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic were felt not only in the protected and conserved areas but also in the local communities surrounding these areas. The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has had a variety of negative implications in several sectors across the globe. Unreadiness to act immediately and effectively during the COVID-19 pandemic worsened the socioeconomic status of the indigenous and local communities due to the lack of diversi ed sources of income. For the sake of their lives, many individuals turned to agriculture, cattle rearing, and shing as a survival strategy. Due to a lack of alternative sources of revenue, many individuals may become involved in illegal activities, such as poaching and deforestation which risk the sustainability of protected and conserved areas.
To mitigate the signi cant negative repercussions of unanticipated crises such as COVID-19 on local communities and biodiversity, it is proposed to encourage and assist indigenous and local people with diverse sources of income to lessen their total reliance on natural resources such as beekeeping and sh farming and to adopt environmentally and socially friendly techniques of farming and shing that will be more fruitful with very little strain on the natural habitat. Moreover, the protected and conserved areas authorities should encourage and promote local tourism to minimize the entire dependency on foreign tourists.