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Peace Parks and jaguar trails: transboundary conservation
in a globalizing world
Brian King ÆSharon Wilcox
Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008
Abstract An increasingly utilized strategy for
expanding conservation in the developing world has
been the promotion of protected areas that supersede
national borders. Alternatively known as transfrontier
biosphere reserves, transfrontier or transboundary
conservation areas, or Peace Parks, these protected
areas are aggressively advanced by conservation
agencies for their purported ecological and economic
benefits. This article provides a comparative assess-
ment of two case studies to understand the various
impacts of transboundary conservation. The Great
Limpopo Transfrontier Park, which unites protected
areas in South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, is
contrasted with efforts to protect jaguars along the
United States–Mexico border. We argue that
while these cases are promising for the purposes of
biodiversity protection, they demonstrate that trans-
boundary conservation can minimize political context,
contributes to the hegemony of international conser-
vation agendas, and remains closely linked to
economic neoliberalism and decentralization in the
developing world.
Keywords Conservation Great Limpopo
Transfrontier Park Peace Park South Africa
Transboundary conservation Transfrontier
conservation U.S.–Mexico border
Introduction
The global expansion of national parks and protected
areas has produced a wealth of research that examines
their effectiveness in promoting biodiversity protec-
tion (Terborgh 1999; Zerner 2000), in impacting
livelihoods for neighboring populations (Neumann
1998; King 2007), and enabling the ascendancy of
international conservation organizations in shaping
policies in the developing world (Schroeder 1999;
Chapin 2004; Zimmerer 2006). Driven in part by the
discourses of sustainable development and economic
neoliberalism, the aggregate territory set aside for
conservation has increased dramatically over the past
three decades. It is estimated that the total area
dedicated to conservation has increased from less than
1.0 million square kilometers in 1970 to more than 19.6
million square kilometers in 2006 (IUCN and WCMC
1998 in Zimmerer 2006; IUCN and WCMC 2006).
While much of the initial impetus for establishing
conservation areas in the developing world was tied to
colonialism, the recent expansion has been facilitated
by a ‘‘third wave’’ that emerged in the late 1980s and
early 1990s that has produced ‘‘an unprecedented
variety and extent of spatial arrangements whose
B. King (&)
Department of Geography, The Pennsylvania State
University, 302 Walker Building, University Park,
PA 16802, USA
e-mail: bhk2@psu.edu
S. Wilcox
The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, USA
123
GeoJournal
DOI 10.1007/s10708-008-9158-4
environmental management goals and prescribed
activities may vary from strict nature protection to
sustainable utilization’’ (Zimmerer 2006, pp. 65–66).
One of the central issues meriting greater attention is
the size and scope of these protected areas, particularly
as implemented in the developing world. International
conservation organizations are increasingly advocat-
ing for large-scale initiatives that supersede national
political borders. Alternatively known as transfrontier
biosphere reserves (UNESCO 1996; Fall 1999), trans-
frontier or transboundary conservation areas (Westing
1998; Magome and Murombedzi 2003; Wolmer 2003;
Spenceley 2006; Ramutsindela 2007), or Peace Parks
(Duffy 1997; Godwin 2001; Ali 2007), these protected
areas represent a compelling approach to natural
resource management that simultaneously raise a host
of political, social and ecological challenges. Rather
than restricting conservation territory within national
borders, transboundary conservation areas (TCAs)
supersede political borders to expand the total area
for biodiversity conservation. TCAs are promoted for a
variety of reasons, including the desire to expand the
size of conservation areas to maintain viable gene
pools, protect migratory routes and ecological corri-
dors for terrestrial mammalian species, and to connect
clusters of protected areas to maximize species range
(Zbicz 1999). The concept of bioregionalism is also
employed in asserting that protected areas should be
demarcated not by the political boundaries of particular
countries but by the ecosystems that most require
protection (Wolmer 2003). The consequence has been
a marked increase over the last decade of conservation
projects that cross national borders while enlarging the
total area available for the protection of biological
diversity.
This article provides a comparative assessment of
two cases of transboundary conservation to derive
lessons for conservation theory and practice. The first
case study examines the Great Limpopo Transfrontier
Park (GLTP) that links the Kruger National Park in
South Africa to the Gonarezhou National Park in
Zimbabwe and the Limpopo National Park in Mozam-
bique. The Great Limpopo project was formally
established in November 2000 to facilitate wildlife
migration, particularly of elephants, to larger ecolog-
ical zones, while promoting tourism through the
loosening of borders between South Africa and
Mozambique. Also identified as one of Africa’s
‘‘Peace Parks’’ (Godwin 2001; Wolmer 2003;
Ramutsindela 2007), this initiative is aggressively
marketed as generating economic development
through the creation of incentives to conserve wild-
life through hunting and ecotourism revenues. In
addition to these perceived benefits, Peace Parks are
also being promoted as an opportunity for transna-
tional cooperation, oftentimes between countries that
have histories of violent conflict (Wolmer 2003). As
will be shown with the GLTP, this raises questions as
to the potential of conservation to facilitate interna-
tional collaboration, particularly since protected areas
have often produced contestations between social
actors with competing goals and priorities.
The second case study examines recent attempts by
various actors to protect jaguars and other endangered
wildlife in the U.S.–Mexico borderlands region. Long
believed to be extirpated north of the political border,
two independent documented jaguar sightings in
Arizona and New Mexico in 1996 sparked interna-
tional interest to establish conservation areas within the
borderlands. With the future of the jaguar in the United
States believed to be entirely dependent upon the
species’ ability to migrate across this border, various
stakeholders are engaging in a number of strategies to
identify and protect suitable habitat, establishing
corridors and reserve areas for these cats. Efforts to
protect the jaguar and its habitat reveal the complex-
ities extending beyond Peace Parks initiatives that
must be addressed in transboundary conservation
planning. The article then concludes with a discussion
of the lessons these two cases provide of transboundary
conservation. We argue that while these cases offer
promise for biodiversity protection, a comparative
analysis helps demonstrate that transboundary conser-
vation can minimize political context, contributes to
the hegemony of international conservation agendas,
and remains closely linked to the expansion of
economic neoliberalism in the developing world.
Peace Parks in Southern Africa: the Great
Limpopo Transfrontier Park
Although the growth of TCAs is a relatively recent
phenomenon, transfrontier conservation has existed
for some time. The world’s first ‘‘Peace Park’’ was
established in 1932 linking Glacier National Park in
the United States with Canada’s Waterton Lakes
National Park. Transboundary projects have been
GeoJournal
123
facilitated through the Biosphere Reserve Statutory
Framework (UNESCO 1996) that draws upon the
biosphere reserve concept formulated in 1976 (Fall
1999). While initially a unique category of protected
area, ‘‘biosphere reserves are now regarded as an
international designation under special status, con-
taining zones subject to different management
regimes according to national laws’’ (Fall 1999,p.
252). By 2001, there were 169 transboundary projects
in 113 countries involving a total of 667 individual
protected areas (van der Linde et al. 2001 in Magome
and Murombedzi 2003). In addition to international
agencies, regional associations and foundations have
been active in advancing transboundary conservation.
The Southern African Development Community
(SADC) Protocol on Wildlife Conservation and
Law Enforcement of 1999 specifically promotes
regional cooperation for conservation and supports
the development of TCAs (Wolmer 2003). Non-
governmental organizations (NGOs) and private
foundations have also been involved in expanding
transboundary conservation in Southern Africa. Chief
amongst them is the Peace Parks Foundation (PPF),
which was founded by Anton Rupert, the South
African industrialist and former president of WWF-
South Africa. Working in collaboration with leaders
from South Africa,
1
Zimbabwe and Mozambique,
PPF has actively pushed for TCAs by advocating
their potential benefits for biodiversity protection and
commercial development (Wolmer 2003).
Arguably, the strongest justification for increasing
the size of protected areas is an ecological one, as larger
areas sustain the integrity of bioregions while allowing
the maintenance of gene pools and migratory routes for
large mammalian species (Wolmer 2003). As Wolmer
(2003, p. 264) explains, ‘‘transboundary conservation
initiatives often involve opening up ‘biological corri-
dors’ and thereby re-establishing the ‘connectivity’ of
bioregions and restoring ‘ecosystem functions.’’’ This
has contributed to the insistence by conservation
agencies of the need to integrate bioregions and
establish TCAs irrespective of administrative or
national boundaries. Advocates of transboundary con-
servation employ much of the same language of national
parks and ecotourist ventures in suggesting that these
projects generate economic development and private
sector investment. Additionally, these initiatives are
packaged through sustainable development language,
and are ‘‘increasingly proposed as a means for the socio-
economic upliftment and empowerment of previously
marginalized communities who will be able to partic-
ipate in, and derive benefits from, the management and
sustainable use of wild resources, principally via the
economic incentives of hunting and ecotourism reve-
nues’’ (Wolmer 2003, p. 266). As an example of this, the
African Wildlife Foundation states that transboundary
areas are ‘‘protected zones surrounded by zones where
rural communities can also develop wildlife as a
preferred land use without having to vacate their land
or give upon [sic] their ownership to the State as a
National Park’’ (African Wildlife Federation 2002).
This description is particularly revealing as it presents
mega-parks as a viable strategy for securing livelihood
opportunities and land tenure for affected populations
that would be in potential jeopardy from a traditional
conservation scheme, such as a national park.
Finally, transboundary conservation is justified as a
vehicle for facilitating peace-building between partner-
ing countries. Many of these projects are referred to as
Peace Parks because they are promoted on the hope that
they will contribute to international collaboration. This
assertion isreified in the academic and policy literatures
on these initiatives. As one example, Fall (1999,p.252)
explains, TCAs offer ‘‘the opportunity of using the field
of environmental management for fostering good
neighbourly relations, cementing and reinforcing con-
fidence between states through the joint management of
protected areas.’’ Similarly, Godwin (2001, p. 11) cites
Willem van Riet of the PPF in provocatively stating that
‘‘political boundaries are the scars of history’’ and that
transboundary conservation will assist in ‘‘the develop-
ment of trust, which is fundamental to peace between
countries.’’ These assertions have provided a compel-
ling political justification for enlarging conservation
areas since they are positioned as an effort to promote
international cooperation between nations that often
have histories of violent conflict.
The Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park (GLTP) is
the product of a variety of agencies and agreements. In
November 2000, South Africa, Zimbabwe and
1
Former South African President Nelson Mandela has been a
particularly effective public face for PPF, serving as a patron
emeritus. At the time of the launch of the GLTP, he
commented ‘‘The concept of transfrontier parks sends a
powerful symbol that countries are ready to live in peace and
solidarity. And these parks attract a large number of foreign
tourists, which provides jobs to the people in that area’’
(Godwin 2001, p. 30).
GeoJournal
123
Mozambique signed an agreement officially estab-
lishing the Gaza-Kruger-Gonarezhou Transfrontier
Conservation Area (GKG), covering an area of
99,800 square kilometers (Wolmer 2003). The GKG
linked the Kruger National Park in South Africa to the
Gonarezhou National Park in Zimbabwe and the
Zinave and Banhine National Parks and the Coutada
16 Wildlife Utilization Area of Mozambique. Private
game reserves and community conservation initiatives,
such as the Makuleke Game Reserve, were considered
part of the larger area. The core protected areas of the
Kruger National Park, Gonarezhou National Park, and
the Limpopo National Park in Mozambique were
identified as the GLTP in 2001. In a symbolic gesture
that received widespread coverage in the South African
press, in September 2001 seven elephants were trans-
ferred from the Kruger Park to Mozambique (Graham
2001; Maker 2001; Travers 2001). As then Environ-
mental Affairs Minister Valli Moosa declared at the
time, ‘‘The translocation of the elephants is a huge
undertaking. It has never been done before. The only
person who can come close to doing something like this
is Mr. Noah’’ (Maker 2001, p. 1). The transfer of
elephants was an economic statement due to their value
to South African National Parks (SANParks), and as
will be discussed, also a telling indicator of one of the
key motivations behind the project; specifically, to
provide a release valve for the growing elephant
population in the Kruger Park.
There are a variety of political and economic
circumstances that helped generate support for TCAs
in Southern Africa and the establishment of the GLTP.
Following the 1994 democratic elections, South African
conservation agencies were finding natural resource
management to be a reduced priority for the African
National Congress (ANC) national government. Vari-
ous goals that were linked to the Reconstruction and
Development Programme (RDP) policy document,
including education, business development, and hous-
ing, were prioritized for governmental investment.
National and provincial conservation officials lamented
that conservation was being under-funded and
that commercialization and foreign investment were
increasingly essential to the future of conservation. The
GLTP provided a unique opportunity, therefore, to
present a new direction to the conservation sector while
skirting the ways that conservation was linked to racial
segregation and land dispossession during apartheid. In
fact, the Kruger National Park was closely linked to
apartheid policies (Carruthers 1995;Honey1999)and
Ellis (1994) reports that it was the location of counter-
insurgency activities by the South African Defence
Force (SADF). The establishment of the GLTP served
as an effective mechanism for downplaying how
conservation in South Africa was facilitated through
minority rule while discursively presenting transboun-
dary conservation as a vehicle for peace-building. The
PPF, for example,is quick to identify ‘‘colonial borders’’
as what divides ecological and social landscapes as
opposed to more recent apartheid spatial policies
(Ramutsindela 2004, p. 68). Presenting the GLTP as
an economic opportunity for resident populations allows
the conservation sector to avoid the painful history that
contributed to poverty in the rural areas while providing
an expansive vision necessary for marketing conserva-
tion in the post-apartheid era.
It appears that one of the chief motivations for
establishing the GLTP was to provide a release valve for
the elephant population in the Kruger Park, which is
believed to be in surplus partly as the result of the
termination of culling due to protests by the interna-
tional community. Driven in part by the international
ban on ivory trading instituted through the United
Nations Convention on International Trade in Endan-
gered Species on Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in
1989, the fate of the African elephant has become a
touchy subject for SANParks. The mere mention of
reinstituting culling provokes international outcries,
which makes GLTP seem like an ideal solution for
expanding the aggregate area for the species. This was
evident in the promotion of theproject, as the expansion
of the area would give elephants literally a ‘‘new lease
on life’’ (African Wildlife Federation 2002), and as
Magome and Muromedzi (2003, p. 124) report ‘‘South
Africa was ‘pushing very hard’ and had, indeed,
announced plans to start moving, in August 2001, 300
of the 1,100 elephants earmarked for Mozambique’s
protected area.’’
The politics of elephant culling seems to be driving
the GLTP irrespective of the uncertain economic
benefits it provides to participating countries and local
populations (Wolmer 2003; Ramutsindela 2004). The
GLTP is advertised as providing a unique tourism
opportunity by allowing tourists to travel throughout
the park while crossing national borders without an
entry visa (Kruger Park Times 2006). To facilitate this,
the Giriyondo Tourism Access Facility, which links the
Kruger National Park to the Limpopo National Park in
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123
Mozambique, was opened to the public in December
2005 (Kruger Park Times 2006). Wolmer (2003)
reports that neither Mozambique nor Zimbabwe were
prepared for the launch of the project, with the former
country requesting a delayed opening ceremony to
allow it to build a tourism lodge facility.
2
This has
contributed to a perception that with the previously
well-developed infrastructure in the Kruger National
Park, South Africa is most likely to benefit from
tourism to the GLTP. Meanwhile, ongoing political
and economic instability in Zimbabwe resulted in local
people resettling themselves in the Gonarezhou
National Park, which threatens its inclusion in the
process (Magome and Murombedzi 2003; Spenceley
2006).
Regardless of the captivating language associated
with the initiative, the creation of the GLTP has had
direct consequences for local people living within
and adjacent to the conservation area. Magome and
Murombedzi (2003) suggest that at the launch of the
project, there was concern that South Africa was
moving too quickly and ignoring the local people
living inside the areas of Mozambique and Zimba-
bwe. In particular, the Limpopo National Park in
Mozambique, which was created in 2001 from the
Coutada 16 hunting zone, had an estimated human
population of 26,500 (Spenceley 2006). Its establish-
ment as a national park occurred regardless of the
human presence, which caused the World Bank to
comment that ‘‘despite their efforts to resolve the fate
of communities living in Coutada 16…in 2001, the
LNP was gazetted as a national park and some
animals were allowed to enter the park area. This
created a lot of media attention and controversy
around the project’’ (World Bank 2004 in Spenceley
2006, p. 661). There is an ongoing resettlement
process to encourage local populations to relocate,
preferably outside of the park. The presence of a
sizeable human population in the Limpopo National
Park was made more troubling by the tendency of the
conservation sector to downplay the human presence
in the region. The African Wildlife Foundation, for
example, described the Limpopo National Park as a
‘‘vast, empty wilderness’’ (African Wildlife Founda-
tion 2002). These developments have contributed to
concerns about the future ecological and economic
benefits from the GLTP and other transboundary
conservation projects in the region.
Spaces for jaguars: conservation along
the U.S.–Mexico border
The U.S.–Mexico borderlands have been the site of a
variety of transboundary conservation initiatives start-
ing with international interest in Peace Parks in the
1930s. While official transboundary conservation
initiatives have not been realized due to a number of
political, economic, and social reasons, large swaths of
wilderness, both public and private, have been incor-
porated into unique management agreements (Sifford
and Chester 2007). Subregions in the borderlands have
been protected through markedly different conserva-
tion strategies. In the Chihuahuan desert along the
eastern section of the U.S.–Mexico border, the idea of
an international Peace Park was proposed in the 1930s
between Texas, Coahuila and Chihuahua. Although
this was not realized, Big Bend National Park was
created in the United States along the boundary. Since
that time, efforts on both sides of the border have
developed a patchwork of protected areas, forming
what proponents refer to as a ‘‘transboundary mega-
corridor.’’ This area encompasses nearly 1,000,000
hectares of land joining Big Bend National Park, Black
Gap Wildlife Management Area, the Big Bend Ranch
State Park, and the Rio Grande Wild and Scenic River
in Texas with the Can
˜o
´n de Santa Elena and the
Maderas del Carmen Flora and Fauna Protection Areas
in Chihuahua and Coahuila, Mexico.
While lands on both sides of the border are officially
protected, the ways in which this is defined and
articulated varies significantly. In the United States, the
four different protected areas under state or federal
protection reflect traditional national parks strategy,
with no human inhabitants permitted to reside in the
areas. In Mexico, the protected lands were established
out of former ejido (communal) property, and 80–85%
of these areas remain privately owned (Herring 2002;
Sifford and Chester 2007). Perhaps most notably, this
area has become the site of a new model of land
conservation in Mexico, based upon public–private
partnerships facilitated through commercial ownership
and involvement. In 1999, CEMEX, a large Mexican
cement company, purchased over 175,000 acres of
2
Spenceley (2006) reports that there is no tourism infrastruc-
ture inside the Limpopo National Park and that it is not open to
tourists.
GeoJournal
123
land in the Maderas del Carmen with the stated goal of
protecting this land and setting a standard of land
stewardship. Government participation is a significant
part of this privately-acquired conservation model,
including the Mexican government’s designation of
the El Carmen Wilderness on CEMEX-owned land as
the first certified wilderness on private land in Latin
America (Sifford and Chester 2007). This model of
corporate-government partnership has received
acclaim for the environmental protections, jobs, and
example of land stewardship it has introduced into this
region where any method of conservation initiative is
entirely voluntary (Sifford and Chester 2007). Ulti-
mately, though, this strategy has placed large tracts of
land in the hands of a commercial partner who is not
legally bound to continue its programs in perpetuity,
raising concerns about the long-term sustainability of
this approach (Herring 2002).
Unlike eastern U.S.–Mexico border conservation
programs that are driven by public–private alliances
facilitated by large commercial entities, approaches in
the western border region have been driven by the
government and nonprofit sectors. In the western
Sonoran Desert, the earliest protected areas north of the
border also began in the 1930s out of an interest in
international Peace Parks, with the establishment of the
Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument (OPCNM) in
1937, and the Cabeza Prieta Game Range (CPNWR) in
1939 (later designated a National Wildlife Refuge in
1976). Since the early 1960s, efforts to integrate these
two parks as part of a Sonoran Desert Peace Park have
been unsuccessful for many of the same reasons these
initiatives were unsuccessful in the Big Bend area,
including differences in land tenure, a cadre of social,
political, and economic reasons, and a general sense of
distrust (Sifford and Chester 2007). By the 1970s,
growing interest among scientists and conservationists
advocating international cooperation resulted in the
designation of the Reserva de la Biosfera El Pinacate y
Gran Desierto de Altar situated across the border from
OPCNM and CPNWR, along with the Reserva de la
Biosfera Alto Golfo de California y Delta del Rio
Colorado in 1993. However, no official connection was
ever made between the protected areas to create a
Peace Park.
While transboundary conservation efforts have
taken shape to the east and west of the border with a
focus on landscape protection, along the central region
of the U.S.–Mexico borderlands strategies have
centered on the protection and conservation of rare,
threatened and endangered species. In particular, the
jaguar has captured the attention of conservation
NGOs and the national media as a ‘‘keystone species’’
whose survival north of the border symbolizes the
struggles and potential of many other species whose
migratory ranges are bisected by national borders. The
historical range of the jaguar extends from the northern
regions of South America, throughout Central America
and into the arid regions of the southwestern United
States (Seymour 1989; Rabinowitz 1999; Sanderson
et al. 2002; McCain and Childs 2008). However, by the
mid 1900s, jaguars had largely disappeared from the
United States, driven south of the border by threats
from development and hunting (Brown 2000; Brown
and Gonzalez 2001; McCain and Childs 2008).
The jaguar was largely considered extirpated from
areas north of the border until two mountain lion
hunters independently documented the presence of
jaguars in Arizona and New Mexico in 1996 (Glenn
1996; Childs 1998; McCain and Childs 2008). ‘‘Cap-
turing’’ these cats on film and video, the images were
widely reported in the local and national media,
fanning the flames of public interest and promoting
renewed attention to jaguars among state and local
wildlife agency officials, conservationists, ranchers,
and local residents (Brown and Gonzalez 2000;
McCain and Childs 2008). Jaguar sightings led to
litigation that forced the United States government to
list the jaguar in 1997 as an endangered species under
the Endangered Species Act. However, the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service also determined that it was ‘‘not
prudent’’ to designate any particular areas ‘‘critical
habitat’’ for the jaguar, arguing that the biggest danger
the jaguar faced was illegal hunting, not habitat loss
(USFWS 2006). This position remains controversial
and while it is currently being challenged in the courts,
conservationists are also pursuing private strategies to
assist in the protection of the jaguar in this area.
Development and habitat fragmentation drastically
affect the jaguar’s prey base as well as fragment the
cat’s population into more isolated pockets, limiting
individual ranges, genetic variability and exposing
jaguars to a number of potentially lethal threats (Brown
and Gonzalez 2001). Particularly in Arizona, the rapid
growth of the human population has continued, and in
2006 the state was named the fastest-growing state by
the U.S. Census Bureau, with an annual growth rate of
3.6 percent (U.S. Census 2006). South of the border,
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123
hunting remains a significant threat to jaguar popula-
tions, and while jaguars are a protected species in
Mexico, enforcement is difficult. Most of these illegal
killings are due to livestock depredation on cattle
ranches (Rosas-Rosas 2006).
An alliance of three NGOs, two American (Northern
Jaguar Project and Defenders of Wildlife) and one
Mexican (Naturalia) have worked to protect the
breeding population in Arizona by privately acquiring
land to create the Los Pavos Jaguar Reserve. With
financial assistance from the Mexican government,
these groups facilitated the purchase of a 10,000 acre
private cattle ranch in 2003 (Miller 2007). Following
the purchase, the NGOs made changes in order to
manage the area for jaguars by removing cattle and
hiring ‘‘jaguar guardians’’ (local vaqueros, or cow-
boys, who oversee the property) (Miller 2007). Various
outreach programs in the region have also emphasized
the economic value of the jaguar for ecotourism.
However, the reserve is not nearly large enough to
support a viable population in this region, as male
jaguars require at least 50 square miles of habitat and
scientists suggest that a protected area must be large
enough to support at least 50 resident jaguars (Soule
1980; Rosas-Rosas 2006). These groups are exploring
options to purchase adjoining ranches to expand the
reserve, but several concerns remain. Some residents
view the reserve as a threat to the region’s way of life
and culture, which is based largely on cattle ranching.
Management decisions are also complicated, with far
reaching ecological, social and political impacts on the
people, wildlife and landscape of the area.
Current jaguar conservation efforts involve a matrix
of private lands and protected areas to ensure areas are
connected through habitat corridors. In Sonora, the
area between the closest breeding population and the
border includes protected lands such as the Ajos-
Bavispe National Forest Reserve and Wildlife Refuge.
Additionally, private lands in Mexico reveal a complex
landscape of private and third sector partnerships,
including the Cuenca de los Ojos Foundation’s group
of private ranches managed to preserve and restore
biodiversity; Rancho Los Fresnos, a 10,000 acre ranch
co-managed by the Nature Conservancy, and Mexican
nonprofits Naturalia, and Biodiversidad y Desarrollo
Armo
´nica; and other private ‘‘jaguar friendly’’ land
holdings connect suitable habitat south of the border
with some level of protection for the jaguar. In the
United States, a matrix of federal and state lands offers
protection for the jaguar north of the border. These
protected areas include national forests (such as the
Coronado), wildlife refuges (San Bernardino, Leslie
Canyon, and Buenos Aires), and lands managed by the
Bureau of Land Management and the states of Arizona
and New Mexico. A recent bill introduced before
Congress proposes to set aside an additional 83,400
acres northwest of the border town of Nogales in a
region known as the Tumacacori Highlands Wilder-
ness Area, and current negotiations with the Tohono
O’odham Tribe also hold the promise of expanding the
area of protection. Private ranches also play a signif-
icant role in supporting habitat connectivity in the U.S.,
with more than one million acres conserved by
members of the Malpai Borderlands Group. This
region includes the Gray Ranch, a 500 square mile
park initially acquired by The Nature Conservancy and
managed by the Animas Foundation. Additionally,
private ranches such as the Cuenca de los Ojos
Foundation and ranchers who participate with the
Altar Valley Conservation Alliance and the San Rafael
Valley Alliance all manage their land utilizing jaguar-
friendly methods.
While NGOs and other stakeholders work to ensure
on-the-ground protection for this species at the very
northernmost extreme of its range, the physical devel-
opment of the political border continues to threaten the
future of jaguars and efforts to support transboundary
conservation more generally (McCain and Childs
2008). In contrast to the political climate fostering
the GLTP in southern Africa, conservation strategies
along the U.S.–Mexico border face a different set of
challenges, marked by increasing militarization and
socio-political hostilities along the political boundary.
The creation of the United States Department of
Homeland Security in 2002 marked the U.S.’s height-
ened concern with securing political borders against
terrorism and other threats. Under the authority of the
U.S. Department of Homeland Security, walls, lights,
and networks of roads have been fast-tracked for
construction along the border, along with patrols by
helicopters, trucks, off-road vehicles (ORVs), and
other vehicles (Secure Fence Act 2006). While the
construction of walls along the border creates an
obvious impediment to the movement of terrestrial
wildlife species, other measures such as ORV roads
and trails destroy remaining fragile connective habitat.
Studies have also shown that other measures such as
the 57-foot-high, thousand-watt lights placed along the
GeoJournal
123
border act as impenetrable barriers for nocturnal
dispersal, foraging, and reproductive opportunities of
sensitive wildlife species (Grigione and Mrykalo
2004). As these border protection measures expand,
the future of transboundary conservation along the
U.S.–Mexico border remains uncertain.
Conservation in a globalizing world: lessons
from transboundary conservation
While conservation efforts in southern Africa and
along the U.S.–Mexico border might initially seem to
share little common ground, a comparative analysis
generates several findings that merit discussion to
properly understand the social and ecological impacts
of transboundary conservation. Firstly, both of the
cases demonstrate how space is constructed to enable
the advancement of conservation priorities in the
developing world. Transboundary conservation pro-
vides a spatial fix for each of the problems raised in
these cases, by providing a release valve for elephants
from the Kruger Park and potential migratory corridors
for jaguars from Northern Mexico. In both of these
cases, the protection of migratory routes is enhanced
through conservation areas that supersede national
borders. These case studies show that to facilitate these
initiatives, conservation planners often label national
borders as ‘‘artificial,’’ while downplaying the political
processes that have resulted in their construction. This
prioritization of the ecological over the political might
be advantageous in the promotion and attraction of
external investment, but it reduces the likelihood of
successful conservation planning. In the case of the
jaguar, movement across the U.S.–Mexico border is
vital to the presence of this species in the region, but an
increasingly militarized border is detrimental and thus
political and military agendas require careful consid-
eration. Similarly, the GLTP has been promoted as a
means of reconciling ‘‘colonial’’ border constructions
that are destructive to species while downplaying the
contemporary use of borders by participating coun-
tries. The supposed artificiality of borders for the
purposes of wildlife protection comes into question
when the same governments are aggressively pursuing
border control and security measures in close proxim-
ity to these conservation projects.
Although advocates of transboundary conservation
are quick to assert that national borders are socially
produced, ecological areas are not similarly repre-
sented as socially constructed. Transboundary
conservation rests on particular ecological concepts
including bioregionalism and migratory corridors that
often rely upon crisis narratives to maximize conser-
vation interventions. While NGOs identify different
hot spots, ecoregions, and zones of concern, be they
within one country or across borders, there is much to
the process of habitat selection that remains arbitrary.
Ultimately, the areas identified for wildlife protection
are selected because of a mix of social, economic,
and political opportunities. As the case of the jaguar
demonstrates, while corridors may be pieced together
to allow species to pass through various regions, there
remains the question of whether these pathways are
utilized. Much is unknown about the jaguar and its
migratory preferences, and the creation of small
pockets of protection may afford little help at all.
While models may predict behavior, corridors and
other migratory strategies cannot compel the move-
ment of species and thus might provide little benefit
for biodiversity conservation.
Secondly, the two cases demonstrate the need to
closely interrogate the merging of conservation with
discourses of ‘‘peace-building.’’ Since much of the
justification for TCAs rests on the idealization that
these initiatives can promote international collabora-
tion, more consideration is needed to assess how
protected areas typically engender conflict over space,
land tenure and livelihood production possibilities.
This is particularly needed since a theme of some
recent research seemingly accepts the potential of these
initiatives to support peace-building. As evidence of
this, in a recent volume on Peace Parks, Ali (2007,p.2)
suggests, ‘‘The concept of peace parks challenges
many deeply rooted historical assumptions about
conservation zones, which have often been considered
a source of conflict themselves due to the dispossession
of land, differentiated values about conservation
versus preservation, and consequently ecological pri-
macy versus political expediency.’’ We assert that the
two cases discussed in this paper suggest quite the
opposite; namely that transboundary conservation has
the potential to further the legacy of national parks to
dispossess land while promoting natural resource
management as a viable economic development
opportunity. It has been well documented in the
conservation literature that protected areas are often a
source of conflict between social actors by allowing
GeoJournal
123
external agents to transform landscapes that restrict
access for local populations (Neumann 1998; Zerner
2000; Adams 2001;King2007). Making these projects
even larger and crossing national boundaries does not
change this and has the potential to exacerbate, rather
than reduce, conflicts between various stakeholders.
As has been discussed, the Kruger National Park was
established through the forced resettlement of local
populations by colonial and apartheid governments. It
is therefore ironic, to say the least, that it is serving as
the linchpin to an international Peace Park that will
involve the resettlement of human populations cur-
rently living in Mozambique.
Similarly, in the U.S.–Mexico borderlands, the
acquisition of private lands by NGOs and corpora-
tions for the creation of reserves can raise concerns
about access, the cost of land, and the livelihoods of
local residents, particularly in the rural regions of
Mexico. Downplaying the significance of political
borders in the promotion of conservation of biolog-
ical diversity, therefore, obscures a complicated
history of how wildlife protection has often come at
the expense of the needs of human populations. Our
concern is that the acceptance of transboundary
conservation as an exercise in peace-building allows
already powerful actors to further advance interna-
tional conservation agendas while ignoring the
lessons learned from national park planning.
A third theme that emerges from the two cases is the
confirmation of recent assessments of the increasing
power of external foundations and NGOs in shaping
social and ecological policies in the developing world.
What stands out from the two cases, however, is that
the strategies employed by non-state agencies differ
depending upon the particular context. In the case of
jaguar conservation, NGOs find themselves empow-
ered by growing global civil society movements, and
with access to significant amounts of capital. Now,
rather than lobbying government agencies and dealing
with public participation, NGOs are bypassing this
process and purchasing the land directly. In contrast to
the outright purchase of critical habitat, the PPF has
shown remarkable acuity in moving Southern African
states towards expanded conservation strategies. The
influence of these actors demonstrates how environ-
mental landscapes are constructed and managed by
external agents, many of whom are non-state institu-
tions. While national parks have resulted in the
restriction of resident populations, there is at least the
remedy of petitioning the state for compensation or
redress. Conservation NGOs do not have the same
expectation to be representative of the national popu-
lation and can thus execute conservation and
development priorities that serve their particular niche
interests. This raises concerns as to how local popu-
lations will be represented within an expanding
conservation agenda that privileges non-state actors
in shaping conservation policies in the developing
world.
A final theme from the cases is the demonstration of
how wildlife conservation remains closely linked with
the spread of economic neoliberalism in the developing
world. As the efforts to protect the jaguar demonstrate,
inroads may come in the form of the potential
economic valuation of this endangered wildlife spe-
cies. Their very rarity may be their saving grace. Intact
natural landscapes attract not only tourists to a region
but also new residents and businesses that pump dollars
into local economies. As Tom Kerasote (2007) notes,
‘‘it isn’t just plentiful sunshine that has made the
Southwest one of the fastest-growing regions in the
nation, it’s also the region’s diverse natural attractions,
one of which is wildlife.’’ In Mexico, the proposed
ecotourism ventures reveal new economic possibilities
linked to the jaguar. Similarly, transboundary conser-
vation in Southern Africa has won support for its ability
to seemingly create new opportunities for the private
sector while expanding the processes of regional
economic integration (Wolmer 2003). The role of the
U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)
and SADC in promoting TCAs is emblematic of a trend
to link wildlife conservation with neoliberal economic
development within the region (Schroeder 1999). As
Wolmer (2003, p. 265) suggests, the aggressive
marketing of TCAs as a vehicle for economic devel-
opment assists in their sitting ‘‘comfortably with this
integrationist agenda for cross-border collaboration,
and its potential for providing widespread tourism
venture investment opportunities enables it to be
portrayed as an ‘engine to propel economic develop-
ment.’’’ In the case of the GLTP, the downplaying of
national borders, coupled with the reification of
transboundary conservation as an economic opportu-
nity, seem to mask the true motivation for the project:
expanding the aggregate size of the area to provide
migratory space for elephants. If this truly is the
purpose of the project, it challenges its economic
justifications while raising questions as to the potential
GeoJournal
123
of transboundary conservation to contribute to secured
land tenure or economic opportunities for local
populations.
Acknowledgements Research completed by the first author
in South Africa was generously supported by the Institute for
the study of World Politics, the Association of American
Geographers, and the University of Texas Special Research
Grant. The second author received research support from the
Social Sciences Research Council, the University of Texas
College of Liberal Arts U.S.-Mexico Borderlands Research
Award, and the Robert E. Veselka Endowed Fellowship. We
would like to thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers
for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article.
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