Repositioning zoogeography within the nature–culture borderlands: An animal geography of reptiles in southern Ghana

Few studies examine the impact of large reptile presence on local livelihoods in West Africa. This article investigates how land users share habituated and resource areas with pythons, cobras and monitor lizards in southern Ghana. An innovative animal geography approach is used, evaluating both reptiles and people as individually active subjects, this being combined with a positivist zoogeographical and landscape analysis. Cobras, pythons and monitor lizards significantly affected local livelihood decision-making. Reptiles, especially cobras and monitors also adapted to human behaviour by foraging in settled and farmed areas, despite significant losses of dense vegetation habitat over the study period. This study of reptiles as active adapters adds new insights to reptilian zoogeography and conservation policy.