Africa Wild

Posted: April 9, 2018



A group of biologists, led by Peter Lindsey of the University of Pretoria in South Africa, has developed an index – the Megafauna Conservation Index – to determine the top megafauna species conservation countries in the world.

The Megafauna Conservation Index (MCI) looked at three main components as part of their study: ecological (the proportion of the country occupied by each mega-fauna species); protected area (percentage of megafauna habitat that is strictly protected); and financial (the financial contributions of countries through funding for domestic and international conservation efforts) components, which were applied to each of the 152 countries assessed.

The top major performers (152 countries in total)

1. Botswana

2. Namibia

3. Tanzania

4. Bhutan

5. Zimbabwe

6. Norway

7. Central African Republic

8. Canada

9. Zambia

10. Rwanda

11. Kenya

12. Costa Rica

13. Thailand

14. Malawi

15. Mozambique

16. Sweden

17. Brunei

18. Estonia

19. USA

20. Finland

The five best-performing countries for the ecological component were Botswana, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Zambia.


Relative importance of the ecological (herbivores: Eco.H, carnivores: Eco.C), protected area (herbivores: PA.H, carnivores: PA.C), and financial (GDP) components in the Megafauna Conservation Index scores © Peter Lindsey, et al

The team chose megafauna because they are particularly valuable in economic, ecological and societal terms, and are challenging and expensive to conserve. Also, megafauna tend to require large areas for their conservation and so act as umbrella species for the conservation of other species.


Number and percentage (%) of countries in each continent that are major performers, above-average performers, below-average performers or major under-performers in terms of Megafauna Conservation Index © Peter Lindsey, et al

Megafauna is challenging to conserve as many large species require significant blocks of wilderness set aside to accommodate them, and some are dangerous or costly for humans to live with and pose a direct risk to human life, crops, livestock and pets.

Key causes for loss in wildlife populations include habitat destruction, excessive hunting, increasing international trade in wildlife parts, increasing demand for bushmeat and human-wildlife conflict.

The results of the study revealed that poorer countries tend to contribute more to megafauna conservation, and have higher MCIs, whereas richer countries contribute less, with lower MCIs. African countries scored highest, those in Asia and Europe the lowest.

Full report: ScienceDirect – Peter A.Lindsey, et al: Relative efforts of countries to conserve world’s megafauna


World map of showing ranking of countries according to their Megafauna Conservation Index scores © Panthera

South Africa is performing rather badly considering the amount of wildlife

Was just about to say the same thing Lis!

Is there a link to the full study ? because it is difficult to understand precisely how they calculated the index with this summary.

One of the criteria being "proportion of the country occupied by each mega-fauna species", the countries allowing their mega-fauna to roam outside national parks perform necessarily better. If I am not wrong, there is no or very little wildlife in SA outside protected areas, so the country underperforms. That does not mean that wildlife is more at risk in SA. A criteria on the threats (habitat loss, poaching,...) would have been useful in my opinion.

I have included the link in the text above

Where is SA ranked?

Below average

But it looks quite complicated when you start reading the source