Pendjari National Park

• Area (hectare): 575,000
  
• Year designated: 1986
• Administrative authority: African Parks Network
• Main economic activities: Agriculture, fishing, small-scale husbandry and tourism

Pictures: L. Janssens de Bisthoven (CEBioS)

• Activities of EVAMAB so far: Anton De Ryck, a bioengineer master student of KULeuven, was on the field in Benin for about two months (August-October 2017) for his master thesis entitled “Payments for ecosystem services: an assessment of existing and possible reward mechanisms for ecosystem services in the Pendjari Biosphere Reserve, Benin”. This research is conducted in the framework of the EVAMAB project. The objectives of the thesis are to assess the priority ecosystem services in the transition area of the Pendjari Biosphere Reserve, to identify existing PES schemes and to define for which ecosystem services there is potential for new PES-schemes in the area. The research and the field work are supervized by Dr Bruno Verbist (KULeuven) and Anne-Julie Rochette (CEBioS), and organized in partnership with the Laboratory of Biomathematics and Forest Estimations (LABEF) from Université d'Abomey-Calavi (UAC) (local supervisor: Dr Castro Gbedomon). A Beninese student from UAC conducted his research at the same time about the management practicalities of the Biosphere Reserve.