WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT IN NIGERIA: PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS.

Nigeria has a population estimate of 170,507,539 million and is increasing with a rapid growth averaging 3.1% annually. It’s the 7th most populous country of the world with the land mass of 923,708km2, making her the world’s 32nd largest country. The geography varies greatly from tropical rainforest in the South to dry savannah in the North ,which is flat and sparsely vegetated. The country is blessed with mineral, physical, biological and energy resources. From the mangrove and rain forests of the south, through the various savannahs, and semi-arid ecosystems of the north, the nation is richly endowed. But what went wrong?
The word ‘wildlife’ brings to mind ‘animals in the forest’. It is difficult to give a specific definition of the word. However, wildlife traditionally refers to non-domesticated animal species, but has come to include all plants, fungi and other organisms which grow or live wild in an area without being introduced by humans.
The term ‘wildlife management’ on the other hand I will refer to mean preservation and conservation or maintenance of wildlife resources. Also it is the art of maintaining balance in the needs of wildlife and the needs of people using the best science. It includes game keeping, wildlife conservation and control, which aims to halt the loss in the earth’s biodiversity by taking into consideration ecological principles such as carrying capacity, disturbance and succession and environmental conditions such as physical geography, etc.
About a century ago, that is before the arrival of Europeans, a diversity of animals roamed the country’s forests and grasslands in appreciable numbers. A stable ecological relationship existed between people and wildlife in many areas during this period. However over the last twenty years, various human activities have profoundly