Research

INTRODUCTION

After COVID-19 was declared a pandemic on 11 March 2020 (WHO 2020), experts feared significant impacts over the approximately 8000 Protected Areas (PAs) spread across Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA; Brooks et al. 2006, UNEP-WCMC and IUCN 2021). Academics and practitioners predicted it as the most serious challenge in decades for African PAs because of limited management capacity, increased pressures on natural resources, economic disruption, and loss of tourism revenue (Lindsey et al. 2020).

No African country escaped the disruptions of COVID-19, impacting public health, society, and economy (Mathieu et al. 2020). Despite recording fewer cases and deaths than other regions (Mathieu et al. 2020), the SSA region faced strict measures like the Global North, eased by late 2020 and early 2021 (Mathieu et al. 2020). Travel restrictions caused a 72% drop in international tourist arrivals to SSA in 2020 and 2021 compared to 2019 (WTO 2023). By 2022, tourism levels remained 42% lower than in 2019 (WTO 2023). Health restrictions led to reduced economic activity and altered production and consumption patterns (UNDP 2021). Both globally and in SSA, economic growth fell sharply in 2020, surpassing the 2008 financial crisis impact, and SSA faced its worst recession ever (IMF 2025).

Reports and studies from multiple countries, including South Africa (Smith et al. 2021), Zimbabwe (Ndlovu et al. 2021), Tanzania (Shoo et al. 2021), and Namibia (Lendelvo et al. 2020) documented disruptions in PAs, highlighting reduced financial, managerial, and governing capacity, loss of local livelihoods and benefits, and increased biodiversity threats, as anticipated earlier by regional experts (Lindsey et al. 2020, Waithaka et al. 2021). Despite these early descriptive studies, a comprehensive analysis of how resilient African PAs were to COVID-19 is lacking. A comprehensive analysis of PAs’ experiences during the pandemic, coupled with resilience thinking, can thus offer valuable lessons for future challenges.

Resilience is often misconstrued as staying unchanged during a crisis or quickly recovering (Walker 2020). In complex social-ecological systems like PAs, resilience can be defined as the ability to maintain functionality amid adversity (Walker 2020). This involves coping with short-term impacts and adopting long-term changes through adaptive and transformative processes (Fig. 1a; Béné et al. 2012, 2016, Walker 2020). Coping capacity refers to the system’s ability to implement short-term, reactive responses that mitigate the immediate impacts of a disturbance, enabling it to “bounce back” from a disturbance (Béné et al. 2012, 2016). Adaptation involves long-lived, incremental adjustments, whereas transformation involves radical and systemic changes that endure beyond the initial shock (Béné et al. 2012). The suitability of these capacities relies on the disturbance’s intensity and duration (Fig. 1b; Norris et al. 2008, Béné et al. 2016).

Resilience thinking suggests short-term coping is effective for minor disturbances, but high-intensity, long-term ones need adaptive responses. If a shock exceeds the system’s adaptive capacity, transformation with radical changes is necessary. Different types of responses carry different costs and risks, with greater degrees of system change generally involving higher costs. Therefore, the chosen response often reflects a trade-off between the intensity and cost of the impact and the anticipated cost of the response itself (Béné et al. 2012). Resilience is a process that evolves during adversity and is not a fixed, observable outcome (Béné et al. 2016).

Through research exercises and literature reviews, resilience experts have identified various factors that appear to be characteristic of resilient social-ecological systems. Biggs et al. (2012), for instance, identified diversity, redundancy, connectivity, broad participation, or polycentric governance systems as key factors influencing resilience capabilities, among others. Kerner and Thomas (2014) later added attributes such as abundance and reserves, learning and collaborative capacity, autonomy, leadership and initiative, or situational awareness as key enabling factors of resilience (Kerner and Thomas 2014).

In this study we aim to explore the resilience of PAs in SSA, focusing on site-level dynamics as multi-level institutions (Cumming et al. 2015), offering insights into on-the-ground challenges and responses. Studying resilience in PAs is challenging because it only becomes clear during hardships (Berbés-Blázquez et al. 2022). like the COVID-19 pandemic. We address two main questions: how PAs in SSA responded to pandemic impacts and what factors affected their response capacity. Following resilience thinking, we expected adaptive or transformative changes to have occurred in PAs throughout or after the pandemic.

Our primary focus is thus on responses rather than impacts. Resilience thinking links responses to impacts, their magnitude, duration, and challenges faced by PAs due to COVID-19 (Fig. 1a/1b). We summarize impacts on SSA PAs during COVID-19 and analyze the stressor and shock regime. This description provides context and supports our objectives, but it is not exhaustive.

METHODS

Data collection

Between March and October 2022, the first author conducted 36 semi-structured interviews with site-level representatives of the management institutions of 50 terrestrial PAs across 17 SSA countries. Representatives of site-level management institutions (hereafter called “managers”) included staff from government agencies and departments, conservation NGOs, and members of local community institutions, and were prioritized for their presence in the field, tacit knowledge, practical experience, and decision-making authority. We excluded the experiences and perspectives of higher-level governing bodies like regional or national headquarters. Despite recognizing the potential influence of personal values and subjective perspectives on manager’s reports (McCool et al. 2015, Bobowski and Fiege 2023, Nikinmaa et al. 2023), we considered them a valuable source for obtaining a comprehensive and contextualized overview of PAs’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of these managers oversaw several adjacent or similar PAs that shared the same management strategies and funding sources. Therefore, for analytical purposes, these adjacent or similar PAs managed by the same actor(s) were considered a single management unit.

We applied heterogeneous purposive sampling to recruit managers from diverse contexts and PA types (Table 1), ensuring good representation of subregions within SSA (South, East, West, and Central Africa) and governance types (government by government, by NGOs, and by community institutions; Borrini-Feyerabend et al. 2013, WB 2021). Sampling was restricted to terrestrial PAs managed for conservation in countries where English, French, or Spanish were official languages. Access to managers was facilitated through personal and professional networks.

Interviews focused on exploring the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on PAs, their causes and consequences, interactions with other shocks and stressors, and responsive actions taken (Appendix 1). Managers were also asked to reflect on the enabling or impeding factors of reported impacts and responses. Prior to interviews, contextual information about each PA was gathered to tailor interview discussions and help contextualize responses. Interviews aimed to capture site-level experiences for individual PAs, occasionally allowing insights for groups of adjacent PAs (n = 4) if managed as a single unit by the same group of actors with consistent strategies and funding sources. For analytical purposes, these sites were considered equivalent to a single PA unit.

The study’s research and data management protocols, approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (reference: CEEAH CA06), ensured compliance with ethical standards. Managers provided free, prior, informed consent to participate. To maintain confidentiality, results are anonymized at the participant, PA, and country levels. Best practices for data security and storage were followed, including use of password-protected computers and databases.

Data analysis

Interviews were manually transcribed and coded using a combination of inductive and deductive approaches. We applied a deductive approach using predefined codes based on existing frameworks of PA management and resilience-thinking (Appendix 2), while also employing inductive coding to identify emergent themes, particularly in relation to response types and contextual factors. Coding was iteratively refined through multiple rounds. We used Quirkos to support coding and preliminary exploration of patterns in the transcripts. Coded information was then structured and organized in Excel spreadsheets for further analysis. We conducted qualitative content analysis focused on identifying recurring patterns in codes across the entire sample or specific subsets, and on exploring associations between coded impacts, causes, and responses. Contextual information from interviewees and online sources informed data interpretation. Impacts were coded into categories and further characterized based on their attributes, causes, valence (positive or negative implications for the PA based on the manager’s assessment), duration, and magnitude. Duration and magnitude were coded on a three-point ordinal scale by the first author, informed by the manager’s reflections.

For each identified impact, we sought passages that indicated whether a response had been implemented, attempted, and/or considered. Reported responses were thematically coded following an inductive approach into cohesive categories. Each response was then classified as coping, adaptive, or transformative (Table 2). These response types were not conceptualized as mutually exclusive, but rather as part of a continuum of capacity, with potential overlaps and interplay between them. For instance, some strategies may initially serve a coping function but evolve into more adaptive or transformative actions over time.

To support the exploration of patterns of association between impact magnitude and type of response, we visualized the data using scatterplots (Figs. 2 and 3). We assigned a disturbance strength to each reported impact (e.g., by multiplying impact duration and magnitude ratings) and plotted the result on the x-axis. Each impact (case) was then linked to the response type (coping, adaptive, or transformative) that was triggered, considered, implemented, or attempted. In cases with multiple responses, we only considered the one entailing the greatest degree of change.

Manager’s insights were analyzed to identify factors associated with the occurrence or absence of impacts or responses. These factors, assumed to influence resilience, were inductively coded into cohesive themes.

RESULTS

COVID-19: the shock and the impacts

Except for one manager who administered a park without funding at the time, all managers revealed negative impacts of COVID-19 on their PAs. These impacts spanned various dimensions, including management inputs (tourism flows, finances, and human resources), management and governance processes (such as law enforcement or decision-making processes), and intended outcomes (i.e., reduced illegal activities or improved local well-being; Fig. 2). This typology helped structure the complexity of reported impacts and identity where resilience principles were challenged, whether at the level of resources, institutional funding, or conservation outcomes. Across 35 PAs, a total of 191 negative impacts were identified, categorized as small (37%), moderate (41%), or large (22%). Impact duration ranged from a few months in 2020 (30%) to ongoing or recently resolved in 2022 (43%). Among the recurring impacts were reductions in tourism, affecting all those PAs with some level of tourism prior to the pandemic (64% of the 36 PAs analyzed). Sites with no tourism activity reported no impact in this area. The most severe tourism-related disruptions were found in PAs with high dependency on tourism revenue or on tourism-linked incentives for local communities. In many cases, the duration of these impacts extended up to or beyond the time of our interviews in 2022. For example, one manager described how anti-poaching capacity improved during the pandemic, not because of strategic planning but because tourism activities that normally absorb enforcement personnel were suspended:

What happens in [the PA] in the tourism season, is that we lose maybe 70 anti-poaching scouts and government wildlife police officers ... What was positive for us during COVID is that for almost two years we had all the scouts back on antipoaching duties ... Now of course tourism has resumed, and everyone is getting back to normal [SE06].

This illustrates how tourism reliance not only affected finances but also reshaped staff allocation, sometimes to the detriment of core conservation functions when tourism resumed. While COVID-19 had profound and lasting effects, previous shocks were described as more localized or expected. As one manager explained:

We have had many “covids” we could say, bomb blasts, insecurity, ... Of course I would say covid is worse because covid is a new thing and it affected the whole world. Drought, politics, terrorism in the country ... is something that comes and goes ... it is something we always expect.

This highlights the unprecedented, global nature of the pandemic and its extended disruption of tourism-dependent PAs in contrast to past shocks, which were often shorter-lived or geographically constrained.

Financial disruptions for PAs were reported by 81% of the managers, including reduced income from tourism or government allocations, donor restrictions on grant use, increased costs to implement COVID-19 protocols, and pandemic-induced inflation. Tourism disruptions tended to lead to more severe and prolonged impacts because of long-lasting disruptions in international arrivals. In contrast, donor restrictions, often implemented for a few months to prevent infections among PA staff and communities, led to shorter financial disruptions.

Compliance with COVID-19 prevention protocols and regulations, travel restrictions, and, to a lesser extent, funding disruptions, resulted in reduced staff availability and decreased presence in PAs and disrupted management and governance processes. Nearly half of the managers highlighted disruptions on law enforcement and community support/engagement activities. Disruptions were also reported for decision-making processes, procurement, and ecological monitoring and management in some PAs. The duration and intensity of management and governance disruptions varied depending on the cause of such disruptions. Funding losses from tourism collapse led to more substantial and enduring reductions compared to those caused by COVID-19 prevention measures, which typically resulted in small or moderate reductions lasting only a few months.

Intended PA outcomes, both social (local well-being) and ecological (control of anthropogenic biodiversity threats and natural resource use), were compromised in 72% of PAs, presumably due to COVID-19. Managers emphasized the challenges associated with trying to establish causal relationships between COVID-19 and these impacts because of the complexity of both phenomena. Adverse impacts on local livelihoods were mostly attributed to COVID-19 restrictions (in mobility, gathering, and others; 47%) followed by the collapse in nature-based tourism (36%). Increased threats on natural resources, such as bushmeat hunting, retaliatory killing, agriculture, grazing, firewood and medicinal plant collection, and mining were reported. These threats were associated with disruptions in local communities, as well as in management and governance processes outlined above. Despite their frequency, these increases were generally described as short-lived (lasting a few months in 2020) and of small to moderate magnitude. Only five managers reported large or long-lasting (i.e., > 1 year) increases in threats. Some managers reported temporary declines in threats (though short-lived) attributed to concerns about the spread of zoonotic diseases and reduced disturbance to wildlife from decreased tourism and human movement. Two managers reported having documented increases in wildlife abundance during the COVID-19 pandemic period but doubted their causal attribution.

Managers revealed that COVID-19 often co-occurred with other shocks, including socio-political (e.g., terrorism, armed conflict) and natural shocks (e.g., drought), which interacted with and compounded adverse impacts on PAs. These co-occurring and interacting shocks were sometimes viewed as even more detrimental to PAs than COVID-19, despite receiving less international attention and response from the international community.

Type of responses

Managers of 32 PAs reported responses to pandemic-triggered impacts, totalling 143 implemented (88%), attempted (5%), or intended but not yet implemented (7%). We grouped these responses into 23 categories (Table 3), with the most prevalent being budget reallocations, expense reduction, and budget reprioritization (50% of PAs), along with emergency fundraising (50% of PAs). These responses were primarily implemented to address financial disruptions caused by the pandemic (e.g., covering funding gaps left by affected tourism or other sources), but occasionally tried to solve negative impacts on local communities or the loss of informal PA staff salaries. Another highly prevalent response was the temporary adjustment of staff deployment and activities, often to comply with COVID-19 restrictions. This included actions such as modifying patrol tactics, increasing the use of virtual meetings, or adapting strategies to meet and work with local communities while avoiding large gatherings via increased use of radio shows, door-to-door strategies, among others.

The evaluation of the effectiveness of implemented responses was inconsistent across managers and PAs. But at least a quarter of the identified responses were judged as ineffective or unintentionally negative for the PA by the interviewee, particularly those involving adjustments in PA activities. These adjustments were often deemed suboptimal, leading to underperformance or negative side-effects on other PA dimensions, such as increased expenses. Similarly, attempts to request for external financial support during the emergency were more frequently reported as ineffective, but these tended to affect PAs that were not used to receiving such support.

The majority (74%) of the 143 responses were categorized as “coping.” Coping responses included budget reallocations, reprioritization of activities during the disturbance, temporary expense reduction, or temporary modifications in the deployment of activities. Of the coping responses (n = 106), the vast majority (94%) were reported as fully implemented with only a few instances of reported failure (6%).

Adaptive responses composed 13% of all responses, yet only 40% had been successfully implemented at the time of the interview. These adaptive measures included the creation of savings accounts and diversification of funding mechanisms to create redundancy in finances for future crises. However, interviewees admitted concerns about the likelihood of their continuation after the immediate stressor subsided. Similarly, at least two other managers observed a decline in support and initiatives from partners and governing actors as the COVID-19 crisis advanced, highlighting a potential loss of momentum, as expressed in the following quote:

... my experience has been that, at the onset of the pandemic, everyone is “Oh, let’s try to do this, let’s try to do that,” both from the partners and park side. ... But as time passes, ... we noticed a reduction of the interventions [SE04].

Only one response was classified as transformative, reported by an NGO-supported PA in southern Africa. Such transformation involved a shift in focus in their management approach, from a conservation-centric approach prioritizing law enforcement, wildlife management and monitoring, to one that equally prioritized the support and empowerment of local communities as key conservation partners. According to the interviewee, the PA, with a strong reliance on tourism, experienced a collapse in visitor numbers during COVID-19, leaving the local communities unemployed “from one day to another” “with no backup plan, no buffer, no compensation” [SE06]. This crisis served as a “wake-up call” and prompted reflection and self-awareness among managers and NGO directors. As a result, the NGO decided to strengthen fundraising efforts to secure additional, new, and long-term funds to implement new long-term programs that provide communities with additional income and enable participation in conservation efforts.

Eleven percent of responses were categorized as “coping/adaptive” because of uncertainty about their duration. For instance, the “implementation of disease prevention protocols” involved consistent but minor adjustments to existing protocols, making it unclear whether these changes would be temporary (i.e., coping response) or ongoing beyond COVID-19 (i.e., adaptive response). Another example was a PA providing fast-growing seeds to support local agriculture as an alternative to the tourism economy, which had become the primary driver of the local economy. Classification of this response depended on whether agriculture would continue post-tourism recovery, a detail unknown at the time of the interview.

No clear link was found between the magnitude of COVID-19 impacts and the degree of change in implemented or contemplated responses (Fig. 3). Most responses involved minor adjustments or no change, even when addressing impacts of small or moderate magnitude. Although a few examples of more substantial “adaptive” or “adaptive/coping” responses exist, their frequency did not consistently correlate with a specific impact intensity. This pattern was also absent for coping responses. However, the only transformative response identified aligned with a significant disruption triggered by COVID-19.

Barriers and enablers

Forty-four percent of the adverse impacts identified by managers remained unaddressed at the time of the interviews. Several factors influencing managers’ capacity to respond to the impacts were revealed during the interviews (Table 4).

Funding-related factors were frequently cited as significant barriers to responsive action. Insufficient funds hindered responses, from coping to transformative. For instance, intentions to diversify PA funding through income-generating ventures were hindered by a lack of initial investment funds. In contrast, PAs that had secured financial savings prior to the crisis reported better coping capabilities. Flexibility and decision-making authority over financial resources were crucial, and their absence impeded the implementation of several intended coping responses such as budget reallocations or fundraising attempts.

Perceived and actual agency (e.g., control over financial resources or empowerment to decide and implement changes) also emerged as a key mediator of response capacity. Some managers viewed the capacity to operate their PA remotely, via technological solutions or strong partnerships and delegation to local communities, as crucial enablers to sustain governance and management activities while COVID-19 resulted in movement and gathering restrictions. For example, some community-led PAs that had trained local communities to mitigate human-wildlife conflicts were able to rely on their support when tourism revenues declined and PA staff had no means to intervene.

Interviews revealed that implementation and choice of responses to COVID-19 impacts were also influenced by decision makers’ perception and thinking patterns. Certain responses were deemed unnecessary, unfeasible, or falling beyond PA’s responsibilities and therefore were never implemented. For instance, managers sometimes attributed disruptions in local communities’ livelihoods (coded in this study as impacts on PA outcomes) to broader national or regional economic disruptions triggered by COVID-19, absolving themselves and the PA of responsibility for finding solutions. During the interviews, managers reported feeling overwhelmed by the multifaceted impacts of the pandemic, which constrained their capacity to engage in broader strategic planning beyond short-term mitigation.

Managers acknowledged the immense challenge posed by severity and multidimensionality of the COVID-19 crisis. Concurrent restrictions on movement and gathering, disruptions to the economy, social context, and staff health and availability severely constrained the range of responses that PAs could implement. Moreover, this challenging situation unfolded in the context of numerous significant pressures and stressors faced by PAs, including conflicts with local communities, concurrent shocks, and escalating biodiversity threats. Managers recognized that these simultaneous challenges prevented them from addressing issues beyond immediate and urgent needs. The metaphor “We are just putting out fires” [SE07] vividly captures the constant state of stress experienced by managers.

DISCUSSION

In alignment with published literature (Lendelvo et al. 2020, Lindsey et al. 2020, Ndlovu et al. 2021, Shoo et al. 2021, Smith et al. 2021, Waithaka et al. 2021), PA managers highlighted that the COVID-19 pandemic posed significant challenges to PAs across SSA, as evidenced by the negative impacts reported in our study, which align with previous claims, fears, and reports. Albeit recognizing other and potentially more detrimental shocks and stressors to the PA function and outcomes, managers were extremely challenged by the unforeseen nature of COVID-19, its multidimensionality, and global reach. Our study suggests that PAs in SSA were rarely spared from the shock, which triggered disruptions affecting management inputs (i.e., tourism flows, finances, and staff), management and governance processes (e.g., law enforcement or decision-making processes), and intended outcomes (i.e., reduction of illegal activities and improvement or maintenance of local well-being). Although the causal link between the pandemic and some of the reported impacts on PA outcomes may be debated, reported disruptions on inputs and processes appeared rather evident. Not all PAs were impacted to the same intensity. Many of the reported negative impacts were considered to involve small or moderate disruptions, yet one in five represented major negative impacts, and nearly half of the identified impacts persisted at the time of the study or had only recently been resolved.

Contrary to resilience thinking (Norris et al. 2008, Béné et al. 2016), we did not find an association between the severity of a reported impact and the type of action implemented or considered in response. Generally, the response of PAs to the pandemic-induced disruptions was limited. Many impacts remained completely unaddressed and when responses were put in place, these often consisted of coping strategies aimed at quickly rebounding from the shock. Coping strategies were widespread even when trying to address seemingly major disruptions in the PA system. The most prevalent response, for instance, involved the reallocation of existing funds and mobilization of additional resources to fill funding gaps and manage emerging needs during the pandemic. Although these coping mechanisms helped to stabilize the situation and avert the predicted collapses (e.g., Lindsey et al. 2020), the limited adoption of adaptive and transformative responses raises concerns from a resilience perspective (e.g., Walker 2020, Walker et al. 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic opened windows of opportunity, as temporary moments for change, such as increased collaboration with local communities and partners (Olsson et al. 2006). However, deeper transformative shifts, like reducing dependence on tourism, largely did not occur, possibly because the broader system remained in crisis mode. As the adaptive cycle suggests, such windows are brief and often close as urgency fades, which may explain the observed return to coping rather than transformative strategies. Resilience-thinking underscores the importance of crises as opportunities for reflection, reorganization, change, and “bouncing forward” (e.g., Young 2010, Walker et al. 2020, Berbés-Blázquez et al. 2022).

Similarly, many conservationists viewed COVID-19 as an unprecedented opportunity to question previous assumptions and refine existing PA practices and models (e.g., Fletcher et al. 2020, Hockings et al. 2020, Kaelo et al. 2020). However, the observed response pattern suggests a potential lack of capacity for self-organization and learning during crises (Walker 2020), which could be hindering opportunities for long-term improvement and resilience enhancement. Coping responses are not bad strategies, and we recognize that adaptive and transformative responses are not inherently preferable and have much greater inherent costs and risks for the system (Béné et al. 2012). Yet balancing the stability sought by coping strategies with the change inherent to adaptive and transformative responses is essential to navigating adversity (Béné et al. 2012, McCool et al. 2015). The skewed focus toward seeking stability (through coping responses) instead of embracing change revealed in our study indicates resistance rather than resilience (Walker 2020, Walker et al. 2020). Although we broadly aligned coping, adaptive, and transformative responses with the intensity of impacts, we acknowledge that change in complex systems is often non-linear. Even small disturbances can trigger major shifts if a system is near a threshold. The lack of correlation between impact magnitude and response type in our findings may reflect these threshold effects rather than simple inertia or capacity gaps.

We also recognize that the relative scarcity of adaptive and transformative change captured in this study does not necessarily imply that such changes are not occurring. These changes may have been overlooked by park managers during the interviews, especially as they might partly lack insights into decision-making processes and responses being undertaken at higher institutional levels. It is also possible that adaptive and transformative changes were still under consideration at the time of the interviews and thus unreported. In fact, some authors theorize that responses involving a lower degree of change precede and prepare a system for a deeper and more sustained response (Enfors-Kautsky et al. 2021). However, the findings and arguments of other researchers suggest that there is a tendency to relax and demobilize during a crisis as the threat and the pressure ease (Moraes et al. 2023) and that the implementation of coping responses reduces the potential for adaptive or transformative action (Enfors-Kautsky et al. 2021). Some PA managers recognized a loss of momentum in responsive actions to COVID-19 as the crisis progressed, while others feared that the reflections and lessons learned during the pandemic, such as the need to diversify funding and reduce the reliance on international tourism revenues would be forgotten and unaddressed as the crisis subsided.

The absence of a strong correlation between impact magnitude and response type also underscores the complexity of the decision making and responsive processes during crises. Whether and how a PA responds to the challenges brought about by a crisis is affected by various factors (Béné et al. 2012). From examining the experiences of managers during COVID-19, we identified funding, agency, support networks, and mindsets as recurrent factors influencing response capacity. As recognized by Biggs et al. (2012), isolating the contributions of individual factors to resilience and response capacity is difficult and their separation is an analytical construct. These dynamics are shaped by initial conditions. PAs with prior financial buffers, local governance capacity, or institutional flexibility appeared better able to respond, regardless of impact severity. This path-dependency reinforces the importance of pre-crisis context in shaping resilience outcomes, including the characteristics of the greater social-ecological context within which PAs are found, which would deserve further exploration in future similar research.

Financial resources were a recurrent theme, reported as being key for implementing any sort of response, from coping to transformative. For instance, for PAs to be able to modify their deployment strategy to adhere to COVID-19 protocols without compromising its function, resources were needed to cover the financial requirements of deploying smaller teams in the field (e.g., fuel, food ratios). Similarly, to support local communities whose livelihoods had been disrupted by the pandemic, managers required additional financial resources. Even well-intended long-term responses, such as the creation of new income-generating activities often required initial financial investments. Existing networks of supporters, particularly NGOs or donors, proved to be an asset for PAs facing financial challenges and in need of emergency funding to address staff, process, or outcome-related impacts. This factor aligns with the concept of “connectivity” or “social networks” in resilience thinking (e.g., Biggs et al. 2012, Wither et al. 2021), which suggests that social networks can enable access to a wider range of resources during a crisis (Wither et al. 2021, Jones and Faas 2017).

Beyond having access to financial resources, flexibility and decision-making authority over these was key in enabling PAs to react quickly and respond to the new needs emerging from the crisis. The concept of agency or authority recurrently emerged in the narratives of PA managers as a key enabler (or barrier) for their response during the pandemic. Limited agency of PA managers was explicitly mentioned as an impeding factor to activate coping responses during the pandemic, a finding that aligns with earlier research (Kerner and Thomas 2014). Although not explicitly articulated by the interviewed PA managers, we contend that agency may also be required for adaptive and transformative responses. We argue that a greater sense of authority and agency among PA managers and local PA staff may foster a greater sense of ownership and responsibility (Ryan and Deci 2000). This, in turn, could potentially motivate them to embrace the associated risks and costs of adaptive and transformative responses, which are essential for long-term resilience, as discussed above (Béné et al. 2012, 2016). Having said that, and although our interpretation of the results points at the potential benefits of greater local autonomy of PA managers and staff in a crisis scenario, we acknowledge that PAs must be governed under considerations that include but are not restricted to resilience and crisis-scenarios.

Our analysis also points at the mindset of managers as a subtle yet significant factor in shaping PAs’ responses to crises. How PA practitioners perceive and understand the world influences their conservation challenges (Bobowski and Fiege 2023) and therefore their decisions. Resilience experts increasingly recognize the pivotal role of individual mindsets (Luthe and Whyss 2015), particularly self-reflection, learning capacity, critical and future-oriented thinking for both enabling adaptation and transformation (Walker et al. 2002, Biggs et al. 2012, Svare et al. 2023). Yet, our findings suggest that many managers were overwhelmed by the scale and uncertainty of the pandemic, limiting their capacity for this kind of slower, strategic thinking. Although our focus is on site-level perspectives, broader organizational culture (Rollins 1993) and the surrounding social-ecological context also shape individual mindsets and influence the overall resilience of PAs, though this may need further exploration in future research. Importantly, not all transformation stems from planning. External shocks, such as policy shifts or technological innovations, can trigger abrupt system reconfigurations. This underscores the need for anticipatory capacity, not just reactive strategies. Organizational culture, encompassing the shared values, beliefs, formal and informal norms, and practices that shape decision making and behavior (Larsen and Valentine 2007), can either enable or constrain resilience. If organizational cultures within PAs are rigid, resistant to change, and prioritize stability, this can create barriers for adaptation and transformation even when the mindset of managers themselves would be conducive to resilience (Stirzaker et al. 2011). For instance, Biggs et al. (2011) highlight how PA procedures are often not designed to be adaptive, let alone transformative, making it challenging to embed reflection and resilience within those frameworks. Fostering resilience thinking among PA practitioners is crucial for enhancing the capacity to navigate and respond to crises effectively. However, it is equally important to cultivate a culture of reflexive, forward-looking thinking within PA organizations to support resilience-building efforts. Embracing principles of learning organizations (Michael 1995, Biggs et al. 2011) can facilitate this cultural shift and contribute to the long-term resilience of PAs.

CONCLUSIONS

In this article, we have leveraged the opportunity offered by the COVID-19 crisis to learn about the resilience of PAs from an institutional, governance, and management perspective. We have shown a predominant reliance on coping strategies to mitigate and absorb the immediate impacts of the COVID-19 crisis. Although these strategies played an important role in stabilizing the situation and averting otherwise feared catastrophic collapses, we contend that the investigated PAs across SSA missed an opportunity for self-reflection and learning and failed to adopt adaptive and transformative responses that could have otherwise led to long-term improvements and resilience enhancement. The magnitude and duration of the disruptions triggered by COVID-19 and the type of responses implemented or considered are not correlated, which underscores the complexities of decision making and responsive action during a crisis and highlights which factors such as funding, agency, support networks, and mindsets significantly influence the capacity of a PA to respond to adversity.

PAs operate in a complex stressor regime of concurrent shocks and stressors, with the COVID-19 pandemic constituting one among others (e.g., droughts, political and social turmoil, other pandemics). Being exposed to multiple stresses and their interactions can reduce the capacity of systems to respond (Young 2010), as experienced by some PA managers of this study. This complex regime of shocks and stressors bears significance for both the investigation and the management of PA resilience. From a research perspective, it accentuates the need for studies examining impacts and responses to any given shock or stressor to employ methodological and analytical approaches capable of grasping this complexity.

Although grounded in the specific context of COVID-19, many of the challenges and enabling factors identified, such as flexible funding, decision-making agency, and supportive networks, are relevant to other shocks that disrupt PA systems in similar ways. The lessons from this pandemic may be transferable to crises that affect key aspects of the system, such as financial inputs (e.g., tourism-dependent revenue) and operational capacity (e.g., staffing or fieldwork restrictions), including geopolitical instability or economic downturns.

Despite the intricacies involved with operationalizing complex and abstract resilience concepts and frameworks, resilience has demonstrated to be a valuable means to navigate the complexity of analyzing and comprehending the case of COVID-19 and PAs. From a management perspective, the complex regime of stressors faced by PAs in SSA underscores the importance of building general resilience, as opposed to resilience to specific risks and crises (Angeler and Allen 2016). This point was explicitly recognized by some managers who reported that certain responses to COVID-19 exacerbated the vulnerability to other relevant stressors and crises occurring prior, simultaneously, or immediately after the COVID-19 pandemic.

We strongly advocate for the mainstreaming of resilience-thinking within PA management and governance practice, both across individuals and organizations, considering it a first and indispensable step toward building resilience against future challenges. We simultaneously stress the need for resilience thinking to be embedded in the conceptualization and design of future research studies on the experiences of PAs and other conservation approaches with national, regional, and global shocks.

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