Against Extinction: The Story of Conservation
Abstract
‘Conservation in the 21st century needs to be different and this book is a good indicator of why.’ Bulletin of British Ecological Society Against Extinction tells the history of wildlife conservation from its roots in the 19th century, through the foundation of the Society for the Preservation of the Wild Fauna of the Empire in London in 1903 to the huge and diverse international movement of the present day. It vividly portrays conservation's legacy of big game hunting, the battles for the establishment of national parks, the global importance of species conservation and debates over the sustainable use of and trade in wildlife. Bill Adams addresses the big questions and ideas that have driven conservation for the last 100 years: How can the diversity of life be maintained as human demands on the Earth expand seemingly without limit? How can preservation be reconciled with human rights and the development needs of the poor? Is conservation something that can be imposed by a knowledgeable elite, or is it something that should emerge naturally from people's free choices? These have never been easy questions, and they are as important in the 21st century as at any time in the past. The author takes us on a lively historical journey in search of the answers.
... What and how to conserve are essential matters because biodiversity protection and degradation have unequal distribution of costs and benefits (Vucetich et al. 2018). For example, Indigenous people have historically suffered forced displacements from their lands in the name of conservation (Adams 2004;Dowie 2009). ...
... Furthermore, the underlying causes behind conservation inequalities and alternatives to them has been considered by studies that focus on Indigenous people and conservation (Chicchón 2009;Kimmerer 2013;Gilio-Whitaker 2019;Hope 2021), and colonial/decolonial conservation (Adams 2004;Domínguez & Luoma 2020;Trisos et al. 2021;Collins et al. 2021). ...
... Western ideas of nature have also been a fundamental element of the colonial and neoliberal projects. Colonialism features widely in the history of conservation (Adams 2004;Brockington et al. 2008) and in current conservation practices . Ecology, the main scientific pillar of conservation, is rooted in colonialism, with the exploration, classification and collection of wildlife from the colonies (Trisos et al. 2021). ...
This PhD explores the politics of pewen tree (Araucaria araucana) conservation in Chile and how these are shaped by different understandings of nature and human-nature relations. Embedded within the political ecology of conservation and informed by relational approaches from environmental humanities and ontological politics, the thesis explores these debates through an in-depth example from a less widely researched field, namely tree conservation. Pewen is an iconic tree in Chile, with the highest level of legal protection. It is present in the temperate rain forest of Southern Chile and Argentina, and it can reach 50 meters high and more than 1000 years old. For Pewenche indigenous peoples, pewen is a sacred tree and a basic means of subsistence, mainly, but not only, because of its nutritious seeds (i.e. piñones). The research is based on qualitative methods: interviews with government officials, ecologists, geneticists, and Pewenche; participatory observation in workshops and meetings; field visits to pewen forests with relevant actors; and a review of policy documents, public letters and newspapers. Fieldwork was conducted between 2017 and 2018, when two key events took place: the national reclassification of pewen conservation status and the start of the Pewen National Conservation Plan. The analysis unfolds through three sections. First, it explores the politics of pewen reclassification demonstrating how the process was shaped by cultural and political meanings ascribed to species status in the assessments. Second, it explores the relationships between Pewenche and pewen as a process of becoming-with, showing how a local pewen ontology is enacted from the interaction between Pewenche and pewen in ways that challenges dominant conservation dichotomies. Third, it develops an analysis of the ways in which different human-nature relations shape pewen conservation, comparing three approaches to this (ecologists, geneticists and Pewenche) and examining how these are embedded in unequal power relations.
... динамичный характер целей и политики в области охраны природы влияет на концепции конфликта и сосуществования -особенно по мере того, как охрана дикой природы втягивается в русло глобальной экологической политики и политики устойчивого развития (Conover, 2001); институциональные и политические истории, а также истории наук, которые информируют их, формируют то, что организации по охране природы приоритизируют и делают это в настоящем (Adams, 2004); ...
... Культуры охраны природы и экологизма развиваются с течением времени (Adams, 2004;Anderson & Grove, 1987;Guha, 2014;Lewis, 2004). Рассмотрим культурную историю таких спорных видов деятельности, как охота и использование дикой природы (MacKenzie, 1988;Ritvo, 1987;Somerville, 2016). ...
As human-wildlife conflicts become more frequent, serious and widespread worldwide, they are notoriously challenging to resolve, and many efforts to address these conflicts struggle to make progress. These Guidelines provide an essential guide to understanding and resolving human-wildlife conflict. The Guidelines aim to provide foundations and principles for good practice, with clear, practical guidance on how best to tackle conflicts and enable coexistence with wildlife. They have been developed for use by conservation practitioners, community leaders, decision-makers, researchers, government officers and others. Focusing on approaches and tools for analysis and decision-making, they are not limited to any particular species or region of the world.
... Extensive funding and attention have thus made PAs and community-based approaches de facto conservation strategies worldwide and, therefore, central drivers of empowerment and disempowerment in conservation (Oldekop et al., 2016;McKinnon et al., 2016;Milupi et al., 2017). These countries also have high income inequality, are home to diverse Indigenous communities, and have long been targets of urbanization, industrialization, and neocolonial conservation projects that historically occurred at the expense of rural and Indigenous resource-dependent communities (Adams, 2004;Leisering, 2021;Loh & Harmon, 2005). Similar to equity in conservation (Friedman et al., 2018), the geographies of empowerment in conservation suggest there is a strong overlap between empowerment-related concerns, threats to biodiversity, and governance systems that are perceived as less robust. ...
... The perception that local and Indigenous communities lack capacity and knowledge is part of a larger global system of colonialism that privileges knowledge produced in the Global North over situated knowledge in the Global South ( de Gracia, 2021;Smith, 1999). Within the colonial legacy of conservation, perceived capacity deficits have been used to justify exploitative conservation actions for decades (Adams, 2004). Implicit to this justification is that communities require capacity building due 3 Names, descriptions, or justifications and sources of 15 theories and frameworks from 15 out of 121 papers (12%) used to directly or indirectly investigate empowerment. ...
Conservationists increasingly position conservation that is mutually beneficial to people and biodiversity on the promise of empowerment of people through participatory discourse, metrics, processes, and outcomes. Empowerment represents multidimensional concepts and theories that permeate the interlinking levels of power, from the psychological to the political, and social scales in which conservation operates. The multifaceted nature of empowerment makes it challenging to understand, pursue, and evaluate as a central philosophical commitment and goal-oriented practice in conservation. Moreover, definitional and methodological uncertainty may disempower interested and affected groups because they can foster conceptual assumptions that reinforce institutionalized barriers to systemic changes. Despite these complexities, there are no targeted reviews of empowerment in conservation. We conducted a scoping review of the conservation literature to synthesize the meanings and uses of empowerment in the field. We reviewed 121 of the most cited conservation articles that invoked or assessed empowerment from 1992 to 2017 to document geographic, conceptual, and methodological trends in the scales and theories of empowerment deployed by conservationists. Research claiming or assessing empowerment through conservation often focused on communities in the Global South. Most studies relied on qualitative and mixed methods (78%) collected largely from male or non-Indigenous participants. Few studies (30%) defined the 20 types of empowerment they referenced. Fewer studies (3%) applied empowerment theories in their work. Our findings show that empowerment discourse of local and Indigenous communities permeates the discourse of people-centered conservation. Yet, overreliance on empowerment's rhetorical promise and minimal engagement with theory (e.g., postcolonial theory) risks disempowering people by obscuring empowerment's foundational value to conservation and communities and oversimplifying the complex realities of people-centered conservation. Lasting change could come from more meaningful engagement with empowerment, including coproducing definitions and measures with and for disempowered social groups to tackle widespread power disparities in conservation today.
... These empires also sought to conserve colonial resources. A series of meetings following the 1900 London Conference led up to a consolidated international conservation movement (Adams 2004). A key moment was the 1933 London Conference where France and eight other countries promised to conserve fauna and flora, including in their colonies. ...
... In addition, both London Conventions and the 1902 Paris Convention for the Protection of Birds Useful to Agriculture adopted an approach based on cate gorisation. Hunter-naturalists of the 19th century, scientific foresters, hunting interests of colonial administrators, and the British Society for the Preservation of the (Wild) Fauna of Empire (SPFE) created in 1903, were all also instru mental in "framing global environmental problems and instigating conserva tionist policies across empires and nation states" after 1900 (Gissibil et al. 2012: 6;Grove 1995Grove , 1997; see also Beinart & Hughes 2007: 289-309;Adams 2004). The early political pressure was to protect a particular, narrowly conceived human interestthe preservation of a sufficient supply of wildlife to satisfy the hunting community whose "naked utilitarian perspective was made explicit in the preamble" (Bowman et al. 2010). 2 It took more than 15 years, however, before PAs had a secure legal footing in the Belgian Congo. ...
... institutional and political histories, and the histories of the sciences that inform them, shape what conservation organisations prioritise and do in the present (Adams, 2004); the histories of key individuals, communities and other groups are likely to shape their attitudes to other actors and influence the success of interventions (Dowie, 2009). ...
... Cultures of conservation and environmentalism evolve over time (Adams, 2004;Anderson & Grove, 1987;Guha, 2014;Lewis, 2004). Consider the cultural histories of controversial activities like hunting and use of wildlife (MacKenzie, 1988;Ritvo, 1987;Somerville, 2016). ...
Impact evaluations assess the causal link between an action (e.g. erecting a fence) and the outcomes
(e.g. a change in the rate of crop raiding by elephants). This goes beyond understanding whether a
project has been implemented (e.g. whether activities were completed) to understanding what
changes happened due to the actions taken and why they happened as they did. Impact evaluation is
thus defined as the systematic process of assessing the effects of an intervention (e.g. project or
policy) by comparing what actually happened with what would have happened without it (i.e. the
counterfactual)
... institutional and political histories, and the histories of the sciences that inform them, shape what conservation organisations prioritise and do in the present (Adams, 2004); the histories of key individuals, communities and other groups are likely to shape their attitudes to other actors and influence the success of interventions (Dowie, 2009). ...
... Cultures of conservation and environmentalism evolve over time (Adams, 2004;Anderson & Grove, 1987;Guha, 2014;Lewis, 2004). Consider the cultural histories of controversial activities like hunting and use of wildlife (MacKenzie, 1988;Ritvo, 1987;Somerville, 2016). ...
Historically, conservationists have focused on financial and technical solutions to human-wildlife
conflicts (Redpath et al., 2013). It has become clear that although these are important to generate a
context where change is possible, more attention to human behaviour is needed to achieve
longer-term human-wildlife coexistence (Veríssimo & Campbell, 2015). Interventions targeting human
behaviour have been largely focused on measures such as regulation and education. Regulation in this
context refers to the system of rules made by a government or other authority, usually backed by
penalties and enforcement mechanisms, which describes the way people should behave, while
education is concerned with the provision of information about a topic. However, the degree of
influence of these interventions depends on the priority audience being motivated (i.e. the individual
believes change is in their best interest) and/or able to change (i.e. overcome social pressure, inertia
and social norms) (Figure 21) (Smith et al., 2020b).
... institutional and political histories, and the histories of the sciences that inform them, shape what conservation organisations prioritise and do in the present (Adams, 2004); the histories of key individuals, communities and other groups are likely to shape their attitudes to other actors and influence the success of interventions (Dowie, 2009). ...
... Cultures of conservation and environmentalism evolve over time (Adams, 2004;Anderson & Grove, 1987;Guha, 2014;Lewis, 2004). Consider the cultural histories of controversial activities like hunting and use of wildlife (MacKenzie, 1988;Ritvo, 1987;Somerville, 2016). ...
The human dimension aspects of conflicts over wildlife are largely determined by the thoughts, feelings and, ultimately, behaviours of people. Because all human-wildlife conflicts involve people, approaches that provide a better understanding of human behaviour – and facilitate behaviour change – are crucially important for helping manage such conflicts. Efforts to mitigate human-wildlife conflict commonly include actions to try to influence or change the attitudes or behaviours of the people involved. Another extremely common approach for reducing human-wildlife conflict is to conduct education and awareness campaigns. These activities are well
intentioned in attempting to change the human dimension of the human-wildlife conflict, but unfortunately are often ineffective for one very common reason – they are based on incorrect assumptions about cause-and-effect relationships of concepts within social psychology.
... institutional and political histories, and the histories of the sciences that inform them, shape what conservation organisations prioritise and do in the present (Adams, 2004); the histories of key individuals, communities and other groups are likely to shape their attitudes to other actors and influence the success of interventions (Dowie, 2009). ...
... Cultures of conservation and environmentalism evolve over time (Adams, 2004;Anderson & Grove, 1987;Guha, 2014;Lewis, 2004). Consider the cultural histories of controversial activities like hunting and use of wildlife (MacKenzie, 1988;Ritvo, 1987;Somerville, 2016). ...
... institutional and political histories, and the histories of the sciences that inform them, shape what conservation organisations prioritise and do in the present (Adams, 2004); the histories of key individuals, communities and other groups are likely to shape their attitudes to other actors and influence the success of interventions (Dowie, 2009). ...
... Cultures of conservation and environmentalism evolve over time (Adams, 2004;Anderson & Grove, 1987;Guha, 2014;Lewis, 2004). Consider the cultural histories of controversial activities like hunting and use of wildlife (MacKenzie, 1988;Ritvo, 1987;Somerville, 2016). ...
The potential success of wildlife damage prevention measures can be significantly increased by taking the natural behaviour of animals into account, identifying ways in which some species have already adapted to the presence of humans and applying this knowledge elsewhere. It is also important to understand how individual differences in behaviour (animal and human personality) can vary the perception, presence and intensity of conflict from one landscape or conflict location to the next.
The chapter includes sections on: Animal decision making - negative impacts on human-dominated landscapes and ‘problem’ animals; key behavioural considerations; HWC scenarios linked to animal behaviour; and concludes with a step-by-step guide to considering animal behaviour in human-wildlife conflict
mitigation strategy development.
... institutional and political histories, and the histories of the sciences that inform them, shape what conservation organisations prioritise and do in the present (Adams, 2004); the histories of key individuals, communities and other groups are likely to shape their attitudes to other actors and influence the success of interventions (Dowie, 2009). ...
... Cultures of conservation and environmentalism evolve over time (Adams, 2004;Anderson & Grove, 1987;Guha, 2014;Lewis, 2004). Consider the cultural histories of controversial activities like hunting and use of wildlife (MacKenzie, 1988;Ritvo, 1987;Somerville, 2016). ...
An overview of the IUCN SSC guidelines on human-wildlife conflict and coexistence (First Ed.), covering the global scale of the challenge, thoughts on defining HWC and Coexistence, and some essential considerations for management.
... institutional and political histories, and the histories of the sciences that inform them, shape what conservation organisations prioritise and do in the present (Adams, 2004); the histories of key individuals, communities and other groups are likely to shape their attitudes to other actors and influence the success of interventions (Dowie, 2009). ...
... Cultures of conservation and environmentalism evolve over time (Adams, 2004;Anderson & Grove, 1987;Guha, 2014;Lewis, 2004). Consider the cultural histories of controversial activities like hunting and use of wildlife (MacKenzie, 1988;Ritvo, 1987;Somerville, 2016). ...
Engaging with the social, psychological, economic and political
dimensions of wildlife management and conservation is essential for
robust and effective actions and policies regarding human-wildlife
conflicts.
Specifically, in the
context of human-wildlife conflicts, understanding different interest
groups’ perspectives and their different value systems, beliefs, priorities
and agendas is necessary to find out how to address challenges for
improved actions for people and wildlife.
The chapter focuses on the basics of social science and desigining social science research, with a section on ethics, and two case studies.
... institutional and political histories, and the histories of the sciences that inform them, shape what conservation organisations prioritise and do in the present (Adams, 2004); the histories of key individuals, communities and other groups are likely to shape their attitudes to other actors and influence the success of interventions (Dowie, 2009). ...
... Cultures of conservation and environmentalism evolve over time (Adams, 2004;Anderson & Grove, 1987;Guha, 2014;Lewis, 2004). Consider the cultural histories of controversial activities like hunting and use of wildlife (MacKenzie, 1988;Ritvo, 1987;Somerville, 2016). ...
Culture influences how people respond to or interact with wildlife, and how they respond to and manage conflicts. Culture is a set of principles, habits and symbols that are learnt and shared; it unites groups of people and influences their worldview and behaviour. Culture is also symbolic, whereby people have a shared understanding of symbolic meaning within their group or society. Culture may differ markedly within nations, regions and even local communities and can change over time. As outlined in Chapter 10 (How histories shape interactions), local
cultures and environmental relationships are not static and do not exist in isolation; they are influenced by local and global developments, past and present, and this needs to be taken into consideration when examining or working with human-wildlife conflict.
... institutional and political histories, and the histories of the sciences that inform them, shape what conservation organisations prioritise and do in the present (Adams, 2004); the histories of key individuals, communities and other groups are likely to shape their attitudes to other actors and influence the success of interventions (Dowie, 2009). ...
... Cultures of conservation and environmentalism evolve over time (Adams, 2004;Anderson & Grove, 1987;Guha, 2014;Lewis, 2004). Consider the cultural histories of controversial activities like hunting and use of wildlife (MacKenzie, 1988;Ritvo, 1987;Somerville, 2016). ...
As human-wildlife conflicts become more frequent, serious and widespread worldwide, they are notoriously challenging to resolve, and many efforts to address these conflicts struggle to make progress. These Guidelines provide an essential guide to understanding and resolving human-wildlife conflict. The Guidelines aim to provide foundations and principles for good practice, with clear, practical guidance on how best to tackle conflicts and enable coexistence with wildlife. They have been developed for use by conservation practitioners, community leaders, decision-makers, researchers, government officers and others. Focusing on approaches and tools for analysis and decision-making, they are not limited to any particular species or region of the world.
... institutional and political histories, and the histories of the sciences that inform them, shape what conservation organisations prioritise and do in the present (Adams, 2004); the histories of key individuals, communities and other groups are likely to shape their attitudes to other actors and influence the success of interventions (Dowie, 2009). ...
... Cultures of conservation and environmentalism evolve over time (Adams, 2004;Anderson & Grove, 1987;Guha, 2014;Lewis, 2004). Consider the cultural histories of controversial activities like hunting and use of wildlife (MacKenzie, 1988;Ritvo, 1987;Somerville, 2016). ...
What is the change you are trying to make and how do you get there? When it comes down to
complex issues such as human-wildlife conflicts, the answers to these questions are not always as
simple as they may seem. An understanding of the ecological and social dimensions of human-wildlife
conflict itself does not translate naturally into effective management actions. The bridge between
what we know and what we do – between where we are standing today and where we want to reach –
is planning
... Discernment and reflexivity, as expressed in contemplative processes, can assist in the identification of underlying assumptions and biases that impact conservation social science evaluations (Adams 2004;Cronon 1996;Jacoby 2019). Contemplative inquiry facilitates socially equitable conservation processes and outcomes by illuminating areas where change is needed (Bennett et al. 2017, p. 103), and it can support African and Indigenous scholars in the process of healing, writing, and rewriting cultural narratives (Chilisa 2020, p. 237). ...
In many southern African protected areas, religion and culture strongly influence how people initiate, adopt, or oppose conservation initiatives. If conservationists are unable to effectively engage with local communities, the result is often poor participation and failed conservation programs, particularly those operating under Western colonial paradigms. Contemplative inquiry has recently emerged as a promising relational, embodied, and dialogical approach to community engagement that also supports decolonial processes. This paper explores decolonial, relational and contemplative approaches to community-based fieldwork in the Okavango Delta, Botswana. Included are reflections on ethnographic interviews with Batswana conservation practitioners whose research lies at the intersection of Euro-Western environmentalism and an African relational ontology. This humanities-science transdisciplinary exploration challenges normative boundaries between intellectual territories and engages civil society beyond academia. It aims to “undiscipline” religion and conservation science, make a measurable contribution to conservation practice, and connect diverse knowledges in academia and civil society to address real-world ecological challenges.
... financial and psychological costs of geese damage and ragwort poisoning, Section 5.1). Regarding the latter, for a long time, and to some extent still today, the conservation movement has mainly been propelled by affluent urban classes (Lele, 2021), and framed nature almost exclusively in positive terms, emphasising the intrinsic value of wilderness or the instrumental value of ecosystem services (Adams, 2004;Mace, 2014). Rural communities have had much less of a say in conservation decision-making, and the negative impacts of nature and its conservation, mainly borne by them (Green et al., 2018), have received much less attention. ...
Taking into account the perspectives of local stakeholders is essential for just and effective biodiversity conservation. Plural valuation, making visible the diverse values people hold in relation to nature, has emerged as a key approach towards better inclusion of stakeholders' perspectives.
So far, plural valuation has mainly focused on positive values, leaving equally important negative values underexposed. To address this, a concrete proposal has been presented to also consider ‘disvalues’. However, accessible frameworks to help practitioners apply this concept are arguably still lacking.
To address this gap, we here propose the ‘Integrated Nature Futures Framework’ (I‐NFF), where ‘integrated’ indicates joint consideration of positive and negative values. The I‐NFF draws on the popular Nature Futures Framework (NFF) to develop disvalue thinking in a more accessible form.
The I‐NFF considers three perspectives (‘nature’, ‘society’ and ‘culture’), based on which something can be placed on a spectrum from positive (‘for nature’, ‘for society’ and ‘as culture’) to negative (‘against nature’, ‘against society’ and ‘in conflict with culture’), and can be represented as two mirrored triangles.
Using empirical data, we illustrate various purposes for which the I‐NFF can be used: to inventory nature‐related topics ‘at play’ in a given context, to depict how people frame their overall relationship with nature or to depict how people frame specific issues. This demonstrates how the I‐NFF helps reveal value pluralism and trade‐offs, capture the reciprocity of human–nature relationships and identify where perspectives differ and share common ground.
We close by discussing how the I‐NFF can enhance the inclusion of stakeholder voices in biodiversity conservation, which is indispensable for a more nature‐ and people‐positive future.
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... However, these concepts do not immediately emphasise a wider suite of cultural, political, and ethical considerations that increasingly command attention. These considerations include, but are not restricted to, recent attention to coloniality, economic development, and diverse values in shaping conservation and restoration aims (e. g., Adams 2004, Avalos 2023, Brockington 2002, Büscher and Fletcher 2020, Hernández-Morcillo et al. 2017, Mace 2014, Pascual et al. 2023, Philips 1998, Sandbrook et al. 2019, Trisos et al. 2021. ...
Ecologists, particularly restoration ecologists, were early to recognise the challenges of historically unprecedented combinations of species and abiotic conditions brought about by human intervention. However, to date, this ecological understanding has paid limited attention to sociocultural considerations. We propose the concept of novel natures to combine ecological and social dimensions in the perception and evaluation of novelty in nature, and to assist conservation and restoration decision-making in a time of rapid environmental change.
... The harms local and indigenous communities have endured are countless and include, for example, landlessness, homelessness, marginalization, food insecurity, loss of traditions, social disintegration, death, exposure to diseases, and forced assimilation. Globally-reaching conservation organizations, that are predominantly based in Europe and North America, and conservationists risk perpetuating a logic reminiscent of colonialism, characterized by domination and exploitation over marginalized groups, when they rely solely on traditional, mostly environment-oriented parameters (Adams, 2013;Domínguez & Luoma, 2020) as relevant for conservation science. ...
This paper examines one aspect of the legacy of the Value-Free Ideal in conservation science: the view that measurements and metrics are value-free epistemic tools detached from ideological, ethical, social, and, generally, non-epistemic considerations. Contrary to this view, I will argue that traditional measurement practices entrenched in conservation are in fact permeated with non-epistemic values. I challenge the received view by revealing three non-epistemic assumptions underlying traditional metrics: (1) a human-environment demarcation, (2) the desirability of a people-free landscape, and (3) the exclusion of cultural diversity from biodiversity. I also draw a connection between arguments for retaining traditional metrics to “scientific colonialism,” exemplified by a fortress conservation model. I conclude by advocating for abandoning the myth of the intrinsic value-freedom of measurement practices and embracing metrics aligned with societal and scientific goals.
... A conservation regime for the protection of nature consists of the "development of the international institutional structure of conservation" and organisations created that regulate, govern, and legitimize the conservation of global biodiversity (Adams 2004;Adams 2013;Braverman 2023;Thompson 1970). This regime builds upon historical developments linked with colonial history, unfolds within a global constellation of public and private actors, and operates through technologies and spaces of conservation such as botanical gardens. ...
Botanical garden museums are undergoing profound transformations. At the beginning of the 21st century refiguring processes, including climate change, the imperative of decolonisation, and advances in digital technology have led to a shift in the positioning of botanical gardens from Humboldtian collectors of nature to protectors of biodiversity. In this paper, through the sociospatial investigation of Berlin’s Botanical Garden and Museum, we analysed the ordering logics underpinning the staging of nature within the glasshouses - caught between permanence and change. Pursuing this investigation on a double analytical level, we analysed how the Berlin botanical garden is adapting to, or indeed struggling with a shifting conservation mission; and secondly, what are the consequences for the destabilisation of the conservation regime’s modernist underpinnings. We conclude the paper by speculating about the necessity of a nature-culture conservation regime.
... The harms local and indigenous communities have endured are countless and include, for example, landlessness, homelessness, marginalization, food insecurity, loss of traditions, social disintegration, death, exposure to diseases, and forced assimilation. Globally-reaching conservation organizations, that are predominantly based in Europe and North America, and conservationists risk perpetuating a logic reminiscent of colonialism, characterized by domination and exploitation over marginalized groups, when they rely solely on traditional, mostly environment-oriented parameters (Adams, 2013;Domínguez & Luoma, 2020) as relevant for conservation science. ...
This paper examines one aspect of the legacy of the Value-Free Ideal in conservation science: the view that measurements and metrics in conservation are value-free epistemic tools detached from ideological, ethical, social, and, generally, non-epistemic considerations. Contrary to this view, I will argue that traditional measurement practices entrenched in conservation are in fact permeated with non-epistemic values. I challenge the received view by revealing three non-epistemic assumptions underlying traditional metrics: 1) a human-environment demarcation, 2) the desirability of a people-free landscape, and 3) the exclusion of cultural diversity from biodiversity. I also draw a connection between arguments for retaining traditional metrics to “scientific colonialism,” exemplified by a fortress conservation model. I conclude by advocating for abandoning the myth of the intrinsic value-freedom of measurement practices and embracing metrics aligned with societal and scientific goals.
PREPRINT: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/23136/
... Conservation efforts currently rely on public support, social licence and financial donations to maintain worldwide biodiversity, halt extinction rates and encourage a range of pro-environmental behaviours (Adams, 2013;Halpenny, 2003;Veríssimo et al., 2018). ...
Many threatened species suffer from a lack of conservation attention compared to others. Prioritisation of funding, research and conservation efforts seem to be driven by reasons beyond conservation need. This could be due to a ‘beauty bias’, whereby aesthetically pleasing species receive more attention.
We examined how editing an image to increase a species' aesthetic appeal may impact donation choices and public attitude towards that species. We posed two research questions; first, ‘do people make different donation choices when they see original images of a species compared to when they see images of the same species that have been edited to match aesthetic preferences?’ Using hypothetical donation experiments, we asked respondents to allocate funds to the conservation of three pictured species, one ‘aesthetically appealing’, one ‘aesthetically unappealing’, and one whose image was either edited to reflect common aesthetic preferences or left unedited. Our findings suggest that images edited to make an animal more visually appealing tend to receive higher hypothetical donation amounts than original images.
We also posed a second research question; ‘How do people of varying conservation expertise respond to original versus edited images of wildlife?’ To investigate this, we ran three focus groups with individuals unfamiliar with our test species, those familiar with two or more of our test species, and with conservation professionals, which showed mixed reactions both within and between groups. Focus group participants with less conservation expertise noted that edited images often seemed ‘cuter’ than unedited images, and were more likely to compare them to cartoon characters. Participants with more conservation expertise and species familiarity reported greater empathy towards unedited images, and noted that the edited images prompted an ‘uncanny valley’ response, highlighting the need for further scrutiny in how photo editing might be used in conservation messaging.
Our findings support the beauty bias hypothesis and highlight that decisions on conservation support should acknowledge that less aesthetically pleasing species are disadvantaged in public attention and funding. In addition, the findings highlight the role of conservation expertise in impacting viewer reactions, as well as the ethical implications of editing images of wildlife.
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... Por exemplo, Wilson (2) propôs o conceito de Biodiversidade para oficializar de forma consistente as diferentes dimensões da diversidade biológica. Esse conceito foi rapidamente absorvido por instituições ligadas a conservação do meio ambiente e teve um importante impacto político (3,4) . ...
Historicamente as ciências biológicas trabalharam com a ótica da entidade da espécie como uma unidade coesa de resposta às perguntas biológicas, vilipendiando aspectos individuais dos organismos. Nesse sentido, o conceito da Etodiversidade foi recentemente proposto, sugerindo novas perspectivas nas observações da natureza. Por fim, nós aqui, pretendemos apresentar a você leitor, um breve panorama de uma nova concepção nas ciências biológicas.
... Common assumptions include fencing off the area and limiting human circulation to the minimum necessary through the implementation of command, control, and enforcement measures. Therefore, in the first half of the 20th century, the delineation of PAs became the primary strategy for global-scale biodiversity conservation (Adams, 2004). ...
A necessidade de conservar o que resta da biodiversidade do planeta tornou-se um consenso tácito ao longo dos últimos 40 anos, colocando a questão de forma definitiva no rol da agenda de problemas ambientais globais a serem socialmente resolvidos. Entretanto a decisão sobre os melhores caminhos para a conservação segue sendo alvo de intensas disputas políticas e a necessidade de compatibilização entre efeitos socioculturais e ecossistêmicos na implementação de projetos de conservação permanece atual. O presente artigo tem como intuito apresentar as bases conceituais da proposta da ‘conservação convivial’, identificando contribuições desta para a construção coletiva de alternativas realistas centradas nas dimensões político-econômicas do desafio de promover a diversidade da vida humana e não humana no planeta. Realizamos uma genealogia do contexto discursivo, histórico e atual, onde a proposta emergiu. Em primeiro lugar, situamos a emergência da conservação convivial no contexto da literatura das ‘transformações para sustentabilidade’, destacando especificamente a contribuição das ciências sociais críticas para a transformação da conservação da biodiversidade. Em seguida, apresentamos as características das principais tendências e linhas paradigmáticas que guiaram as ações e políticas para a conservação da biodiversidade historicamente no Brasil e no mundo, a saber, a ‘conservação fortaleza’, a ‘conservação participativa’ e a ‘conservação neoliberal’. Ademais, avaliamos o estado da arte das atualizações destas linhas no debate global atual, ao apresentar as características principais das tendências ‘neoprotecionista’ e da ‘nova conservação’, em seus distanciamentos e aproximações em relação à ‘conservação convivial’. Por fim, apresentamos os princípios da conservação convivial e as ações que materializam a proposta, em sua interface com o contexto brasileiro e latino-americano. Esperamos que esta apresentação sistemática e criteriosa da conservação convivial possa contribuir para a construção de ferramentas transdisciplinares e democráticas de pesquisa e intervenção em conservação da biodiversidade, especialmente no Brasil.
... Mammals are the most often crowdfunded animals worldwide [55], and as "flagship species", they can draw more visitors to support in situ conservation, thus helping to fulfill one of the goals of modern zoos [46,52,54,56]. Additionally, most conservation programs in the 20th century were concerned with large mammals [57], and nearly half of all studbooks are kept for mammals [58], which are other important attributes motivating zoos to keep them. ...
Zoos represent a social construct, whose form is influenced by societal development. During the 20th and at the beginning of the 21st century, they have been transformed from assembled collections to internationally managed insurance (ex situ) populations, and these transformations required some changes in taxa numbers and composition. Previous studies have already identified the trend of reducing the number of taxa kept in zoos worldwide. The aim of the present study is to verify this trend in Europe in more detail and therefore to identify the changes in taxa richness and mammalian taxa richness from 1959 to 2016 in the same set of 67 European zoos while considering their opening period (before 1900 and 1900–1960) and location with respect to the former Iron Curtain (Eastern vs. Western Bloc). There was no significant decrease in taxa richness; on the contrary, there was a significant increase in taxa richness for the former Eastern Bloc zoos. There was a significant decrease in mammalian taxa richness for zoos opened before 1900 and those of the former Western Bloc. These results demonstrate that mammalian taxa have declined in numbers to some extent and that the decline mostly concerns older zoos and those that have historically reached a different stage of development. This suggests that European zoos have not been subject to trends uniformly and should apply different and appropriate strategies when facing future (not only conservation) challenges.
... Thus, the issue of biodiversity conservation is of considerable importance in the creation of national parks. Often it is carried out using the zoning of national parks, where in some functional areas any human activity is excluded, while in other areas tourism and recreation are allowed [9]. In recent years, human activities and climate change have put increasing pressure on the environment and natural resources. ...
The species diversity of insects from the orders Orthoptera, Dermaptera, Mantodea and Blattodea in the National Park “Smolny” (Republic of Mordovia, Ichalki and Bolshoe Ignatovo districts) was studied. It consists of 44 species: Orthoptera (40), Dermaptera (1), Mantodea (1) and Blattodea (2). For the first time for the Republic of Mordovia, two species are noted – Isophya modesta and Oecanthus pellucens. The most common are Ectobius lapponicus, Chorthippus biguttulus, Euthystira brachyptera. Rare are species confined to areas with sparse herbage (Chorthippus pullus, Dociostaurus brevicollis, Myrmeleotettix maculatus), inhabitants of rich meadows and steppes (Isophya modesta, Poecilimon intermedius, Stenobothrus lineatus), and inhabitants of eutrophic swamps (Conocephalus dorsalis, Stethophyma grossum). Differences in the distribution of two species of cockroaches of the genus Ectobius, two species of grasshoppers of the tribe Chrysochraontini, and three species of bush-crickets (Platycleidini) are described.
... Notions long held throughout Africa that wildlife conservation is a white-man's imposition on black Africans are being revived again (Carruthers, 1995;MacKenzie, 1988;Neumann, 2004;Ranger, 1999). Such sentiments are echoed throughout Asia and the Americas, where local populations often feel brutalized by conservation policies (Adams, 2004;Burnham, 2000). ...
... The nature of these costs and benefits depends upon the protected area's status and governance, as well as its history of use. One of the approaches for the conservation of biodiversity in national parks is the traditional park management approach (protectionism approach) which denies local people access to park resources (Adams 2004). For instance, some national parks restrict access to resource use because of the laws and regulations surrounding a park's establishment. ...
A better understanding of the benefits and costs of conservation to people living adjacent to protected areas is fundamental to balancing their conservation goals and needs. This study based in the Tarangire-Simanjiro ecosystem explored the costs, benefits, and attitudes of local people living adjacent to Tarangire National Park in northern Tanzania. In-depth interviews were conducted with 30 respondents randomly selected from the sample of 300 respondents used previously for a larger survey. Results indicate mixed responses toward protected areas. The majority of respondents held positive attitudes toward the park (56.7 percent) and park staff (63.3 percent) but had negative attitudes toward the Simanjiro Plains (53.3 percent). Despite the costs of living in proximity to the park, the majority of respondents viewed the park staff favorably, which may contribute toward improved conservation and increased tolerance. The revenue from ecotourism, support for community development projects, and wildlife protection were the top three perceived benefits, while crop raiding and livestock depredation, restricted access to the park, and clashes with park rangers were the greatest perceived costs. Binary logistic regression analyses showed that interaction with park staff was the predictor of a positive attitude toward the park, while lack of ecotourism benefits and living in the vicinity of the park were predictors of negative attitudes. Attitudes toward the Simanjiro Plains were significantly positively correlated with overall income sufficiency, although older respondents were more likely to express negative attitudes toward it. Most respondents were willing to support large carnivore conservation despite having problems with them. The findings suggest that interventions aimed at improving positive attitudes toward protected areas should focus on an equitable ecotourism revenue sharing with adjacent communities, positive interactions with park staff, and overall household income sufficiency to win the support of local communities and thus ensure effective conservation of protected areas.
... Various conservation practices and subsequent changes have been largely informed by particular views about nature and society. The main view by western scientists was that of a pristine nature, enshrined in the concept of wilderness (Adams 2013). This nature, therefore, had to be protected from humans, especially the Indigenous peoples whose lifestyles were perceived to be destructive, giving rise to protectionism model of conservation (Otto et al. 2013). ...
... Various conservation practices and subsequent changes have been largely informed by particular views about nature and society. The main view by western scientists was that of a pristine nature, enshrined in the concept of wilderness (Adams 2013). This nature, therefore, had to be protected from humans, especially the Indigenous peoples whose lifestyles were perceived to be destructive, giving rise to protectionism model of conservation (Otto et al. 2013). ...
We critically unpack the term 'coexistence' and discuss its potential to facilitate transformative change in wildlife governance.
... Various conservation practices and subsequent changes have been largely informed by particular views about nature and society. The main view by western scientists was that of a pristine nature, enshrined in the concept of wilderness (Adams 2013). This nature, therefore, had to be protected from humans, especially the Indigenous peoples whose lifestyles were perceived to be destructive, giving rise to protectionism model of conservation (Otto et al. 2013). ...
This chapter introduces the edited book 'Convivial Conservation: From Principles to Practice' and synthesises the contributions through exploration of three overarching themes.
... Various conservation practices and subsequent changes have been largely informed by particular views about nature and society. The main view by western scientists was that of a pristine nature, enshrined in the concept of wilderness (Adams 2013). This nature, therefore, had to be protected from humans, especially the Indigenous peoples whose lifestyles were perceived to be destructive, giving rise to protectionism model of conservation (Otto et al. 2013). ...
Global biodiversity is declining at an alarming rate, leading to calls for urgent change in how humans govern, conserve, and live with non-human species. It is argued that this change must be radical and transformative, and must challenge the structures and systems that shape biodiversity conservation.
This book brings together a diverse group of authors to explore the potential for transforming biodiversity conservation, focusing on one particular proposal called convivial conservation: a vision, framework, and set of principles for a more socially just, democratic and inclusive form of biodiversity governance.
Drawing on a rich mix of disciplinary perspectives and diverse case studies centring on
human-wildlife interactions, the authors demonstrate the potential for transformation in biodiversity conservation that supports human-wildlife coexistence. The authors argue that this desired transformation will only be possible if the status quo is truly disrupted, and that convivial conservation has the potential to contribute to this disruption. However, convivial conservation must evolve in response to, and in harmony with, a plurality of ideas and perspectives, and resist becoming another top-down mode of conservation. To this end, a rich mix of visions, ideas, and pathways are put forward to move convivial conservation from principles to practice.
The wealth of ideas offered in this collection provide important insights for students,
academics, policy-makers, conservation professionals, and anyone who wants to think
differently about biodiversity conservation and explore how it can be transformed towards a more just and abundant future.
... For, they are protected. The DRC currently offers an ideal example whereby bonobo apes are protected (Stanford, 2012;Adams, 2013;Nellemann et al., 2016) and campaigns for protecting them are high on the international agendas while rape victims receive less attention in the same country comparably. People who are still walking barefoot in the 21 st century simply because their rulers either exploited or sold them are no different from apes before those who created such poverty. ...
Africa has always blamed external colonisation for its Catch-22s such as violent ethnic conflicts for the struggle for resource control, perpetual exploitation, poverty, and general underdevelopment all tacked to its past, which is a fact, logical, and the right to pour out vials of ire based perpetual victimhood it has clung to, and maintained, and lost a golden chance of addressing another type of colonialism, specifically internal colonisation presided over by black traitors or black betrayers or blats or blabes.
Basically, internalised internal colonisation is but a mimesis of Africa’s nemesis, namely external colonisation as another major side of the jigsaw-cum-story all those supposed to either clinically address or take it on, have, by far, never done so for their perpetual peril. In addressing internal colonisation, this corpus explores and interrogates the narratives and nuances of the terms it uses. The untold story of Africa is about internal colonisation that has eluded many for many years up until now simply because it made Africans wrongly believe that it is only external colonisation their big and only enemy.
... Su aparición supuso un cambio de paradigma: el inicio de la ruptura con los programas de conservación de AP regidos por la idea de la naturaleza salvaje y prístina y por dinámicas hegemónicas colonialistas, encapsuladas en la figura de Parque Nacional (paradigma Yellowstone). El denominado modelo de conservación fortaleza (Brockington, 2002), donde imperaba la imposición de la conservación a través de cercamientos, expropiaciones, desplazamientos forzosos e incluso genocidios de población local, irá siendo poco a poco desterrado (Adams, 2004;West, Igoe & Brockington, 2006). Aunque no se terminó con este patrón, que se ha mantenido en algunos contextos e incluso replicado y actualizado en nuevas formas y apariencias, esta mudanza de paradigma permitiría legitimar y justificar la introducción de medidas de conservación en AP habitadas, lo que multiplicará las posibilidades territoriales y políticas para su implantación en las décadas siguientes. ...
Este número especial responde a la necesidad de preguntarse cómo se construyó la red de Áreas Protegidas (AP)[1] en los distintos territorios de España, tras la arquitectura del Estado de autonomías aprobado por la Constitución de 1978. Diversos factores condicionaron el desarrollo de las políticas de conservación en cada una de las comunidades autónomas (CC.AA.). En este monográfico nos acercamos a tres de ellas –Andalucía, Catalunya y Comunitat Valenciana–, dibujando sus trayectorias y buscando una comparación con el propósito de alcanzar una mayor comprensión del presente.
... The recognition that global efforts to maintain biodiversity could be in conflict with those to reduce poverty is not new -see Wells (1992); Norton-Griffiths and Southey (1995); Brockington (2002); Sanderson and Redford (2003). Since the late nineteenth century the conventional response to the threats of decline of natural populations, extinction of species and habitat degradation as a consequence of industrial development has been the creation of protected areas (Adams, 2004). The problem is that, in the case of reserves, this strategy can have substantial negative impacts on local people. ...
... There is substantial anthropological evidence that how we understand nature depends on who we are, what we know, the people we meet (Adams, 2004), and the socio-historical context in which we live. Nevertheless, the findings of studies arguing that the socio-historical context has a vital role (ibid.: 221). ...
This article investigates the relationship between the socio-historical representation of the environment and socio-metabolic regimes in the case of the Spanish state. For this purpose, 70 interviews and three focus groups were conducted with different social actors. This qualitative study has been complemented by reconstructing per capita trends in the material footprint. The results show three differentiated regimes. First, before the 1960s, we found an era predominantly characterized by an agricultural economy, and the environment was understood as a source of livelihood. Material use was between 3 and 6 tons/capita/year. After the 1960s, economic modernization started, and natural resources were considered unlimited. The transition from an agrarian to an industrial socio-metabolic regime was inherently linked to a surge in material use per capita. In the 1980s, political modernization began, and the consumption of materials on average is currently between 14 and 27 tons/capita/year. However, when the material footprint has reached the highest amount, the environment is considered a product of economic growth and a post-material value. Post-materialism's historical and social specifics promote a social representation of the environment that hinges on separating lived practices from the environmental impacts these practices have produced. The resulting environmental concern may not benefit the environment. Conclusions highlight a need to rescue social representations of the environment that relate to the environmental impact of lifestyles.
... This approach to nature conservation is characterized by a top-down perspective based on surveillance and enforcement that denies or severely restricts local communities' access to the forest. The "fortress" reference underlines the defensive and exclusive logic aimed at the protection of a hypothetical "wilderness" that can only be preserved by separating the forest from humans (Adams, 2004). ...
The book analyzes the case of Mau Forest (Kenya), exploring the deforestation process that has occurred and the controversial and changing relationships between a protected forest and the communities living within and around its borders. The volume contributes to the international debate on political ecology from a predominantly geographical perspective, enriched by contributions more closely related to the natural sciences. The study is based on a multi-year research (2017-22) that combines qualitative and quantitative methodologies: research in archives and government offices, field studies in the forest area, semi-structured interviews, participatory mapping with local community members, and satellite and drone remote sensing.
Open Access through https://libri.unimi.it/index.php/milanoup/catalog/book/89
The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the construction sector has opened new avenues for advancing Industrial Symbiosis (IS) research. However, existing literature lacks a comprehensive comparison of how leading AI digital assistants contribute to this field. This study addresses this gap by examining the performance of four prominent AI models, Gemini, CoPilot, ChatGPT-Classic, and ChatGPT-Advanced in generating responses related to IS opportunities in construction industry. The methodology involves a two-stage analysis: first, questions related to IS concepts and practices are posed to each AI model to test their response reproducibility, measured using BLEU, METEOR, and Cosine Similarity scores. This is followed by human expert evaluations to validate the quality of the responses. In the second stage, the models are tasked with defining the European Waste Catalogue (EWC) codes and Statistical Classification of Economic Activities in the European Community (NACE) sector classifications associated with the selected waste materials, followed by identifying potential IS opportunities. Key findings reveal significant variability in the models’ capabilities. ChatGPT models consistently demonstrate higher semantic alignment with expert evaluations in both the general questions and IS opportunity identification. In contrast, CoPilot shows strengths in syntactic accuracy but sometimes lacks depth in contextual understanding. The study also identifies that while some AI models are adept at defining waste codes and sector classifications, their ability to identify practical IS opportunities varies. These insights underscore the need for an integrated approach, combining AI-generated data with human expertise, to fully exploit IS potential in construction. This study not only sheds light on the current state of AI in IS identification but also provides a framework for evaluating AI models in similar contexts. Future studies should focus on enhancing AI models’ contextual understanding and broadening their applications to promote sustainable industrial practices across various sectors.
Grounded within a protectionist wildlife conservation paradigm, and technology acceptance model, the study examines opportunities and challenges of harnessing digital technologies in wildlife tourism resources conservation in Zimbabwe national parks. Conservation of wildlife tourism resources in Zimbabwe is under tremendous pressure attributed to surges in poaching, veld fires, and climate change effects. The extent to which digital technologies ameliorate the situation is the central question addressed by the study. A qualitative research approach was adopted. A key informant interview technique was employed whereby 15 wildlife tourism resource conservation experts were selected through purposive and snowball sampling procedures. Thematically analysed findings identified drones, mobile gadgets, surveillance cameras, collar tags, and remote sensing as digital tools harnessed in wildlife resource conservation across Zimbabwean national parks. Furthermore, the study unveiled vast opportunities in wildlife species population counting, data recording, storage, and sharing where digital technologies can be applied. The challenges faced in the deployment of digital technologies encompass inadequate financial resources, lack of technical expertise, and vandalism of infrastructure. More funding is recommended to enable full-scale adoption of digital technologies.
A contemporary appraisal of the extent to which international conservation law provides for the protection of commonplace biodiversity. It is argued that in light of the current extinction crisis, biodiversity would be better served if the law focused more on protecting common species rather than just the rare and endangered. Particular attention is paid to the rationales behind conservation regulation and how different understandings of the value have influenced the law’s development. Key conservation mechanisms, namely area-based management, species-focused mechanisms and the ecosystem approach, are analysed in relation to how they protect commonplace biodiversity, before a case study on the legal protection of plants is presented. What is suggested is that international conservation law has failed to keep pace with key developments in conservation science, resulting in a regulatory system that appears structurally incapable of halting biodiversity loss. Reforming the law so that it provides greater protection to commonplace biodiversity would be an important first step in responding to this.
Recreational scuba diving has gradually shaped itself into an enjoyable adventure in the underwater realm, interpreted as a world distinct from terrestrial landscapes. The presence of divers on the sea floor, for a limited period, enabled by advanced technoscientific applications accessible to the general public, results in a rich multisensory experience directly connected to contemporary practices of self. However, this is also increasingly linked to mounting ecological concerns. Underwater exploration focuses on the observation of aquatic life, which is conceived as an integral component of the water/landscape of diving. What is understood as a temporary “return” of humans to nature problematizes the human-environment relationship and is deeply influenced by current ecological understandings. Alongside the hedonistic embodied multisensory experience, there develops an ecological sensitivity concerning the vulnerability of the underwater environment. Human hyperactivity, including that involved in recreational scuba diving, is perceived as a threat to this underwater world. This emerging ecological sensitivity enriches the collective imaginary concerning the human-water environment relationship and leads to the development of an underwater ethic that modifies diving practices. Thus, diving practices aiming for enjoyable exploration in the blue phantasmagoria are imbued with aquastalgia, a painful yet nostalgic gaze at the damaged underwater environment.
Mtumbei Kitambi site in Matumbi Hills, southern Tanzania, has generated contradictory interpretations among the locals. Its famous alternate name, Kwa Akida Mwidau, literally means a settlement of Akida Mwidau in Swahili language. Yet, much more mystery is attached to the place than the name suggests. The local people hold that it was a place where troublesome Africans were hanged to death during the nineteenth-century colonial incursions. Some reported seeing human skeletal remains, chains and shackles at the site. In the present, the locals avoid conducting any activity at the site to for fear of disturbing human remains. Using historical archaeology, this article examines the local narratives to disentangle myths from the historical reality of the site. It scrutinises both oral accounts and nineteenth-century European documents against on-site material evidence to determine the historical facts. The article concludes by establishing that the bones interpreted by the local people as human skeletal remains are, in fact, donkey bones and metal objects—the latter hitherto mistaken for chains and shackles.
Mainstream environmentalism has long prioritized wild animals and their habitats while paying little attention to the explosive growth of global livestock production and consumption. However, this blind spot to livestock is changing quickly, in large part because of the rising general awareness of the resource and emissions intensity of animal-based foods and how it relates the interwoven crises of climate change and biodiversity loss. This paper considers both the fertile ground for animal advocacy to be found in the mounting scientific evidence about environmental inefficiencies of animal-based foods, and the need to be attentive to the risks it bears. The principal danger of efficiency-centred narratives is that if they are largely focused on climate change and biodiversity loss, the goal of reducing relative associated impacts can appear in a way that helps to further stoke the growth of industrially produced birds, which should be understood in relation to the already well-established poultrification of global livestock supply and demand. This paper highlights the importance of challenging this partial lens and response, and stresses the need to connect macro-scale environmental concerns to critical reflection about the ways that animal lives are organized in industrial livestock production. The concern for declining wild animal populations among environmentalists is a key lever for this, as industrial livestock can be shown to bear on the loss and fragmentation of habitats while at the same condemning a large and growing share of all birds and mammals to a short and agonizing existence. What emerges is an indelible image of a pathological mode of production that is violently narrowing how other animals get to inhabit the earth.
In Organized Environmental Crime, Daan van Uhm breaks new ground by rejecting the classic image of organized crime as specializing in one kind of criminal activity. Instead, he develops an innovative approach to understanding how organized crime groups diversify into the illegal trade in natural resources by looking at the convergence between environmental crime and other serious crimes.
Personal stories from informants directly involved in organized crime networks offer unique insights into the black markets in gold, wildlife, and timber in three environmental crime hotspots: the Darién Gap, a remote swath of jungle on the Colombia-Panama border in Latin America; the Golden Triangle, a notorious opium epicenter in Southeast Asia; and the eastern edge of the Congo basin, an important conflict area in Central Africa.
The proliferation of organized environmental crime exacerbates the global destruction of ancient rainforests; the mass extinction of species; and the pollution of the atmosphere, land, and water, negatively affecting planet Earth. By uncovering its incentives, features, and harms, this book is crucial to understanding organized environmental crime in a rapidly changing world.
The proposal on the Anthropocene suggests that the Earth has entered a contemporary ecological era, in which climate changes and human activities massively impact the environment universally. This new anthropogenic epoch brings exceptional challenges to the plant diversity in biocultural landscapes, thus preventing their benefits to human well-being. Additionally, the loss of biodiversity is exacerbating along with the inexorable variations in the Anthropocene, and biodiversity conservation could not cope with the elevating anthropogenic disturbances. Despite the enduring biodiversity loss, it is asserted that the effective amalgamation of several conservational strategies could contribute to the efficient conservation of endangered plants. The strategies should be specified with proper operative guidelines for monitoring the effect once it gets implemented. Therefore, the current conservational practices should be reconsidered, reexamined, and updated accordingly so that a more consistent, logical, and integrated universal strategy could be devised which will alleviate the limitations of the existing policies and proposed protocols. This book chapter addresses the major issues that address our failure to meet current conservational strategies and also discusses the essential changes and recommendations to existing conservational practices.KeywordsAnthropogenic disturbanceBiodiversityClimate changeConservationHuman activities
Since 1993 the Serengeti Regional Conservation Project (SRCP) in Tanzania has conducted a game cropping operation (the commercial utilization of wild animal populations in natural habitats) in areas immediately outside the Serengeti National Park in order to provide adjacent villages with incentives to abstain from illegal hunting. In this study we carry out a comparative economic analysis of the SRCP cropping operation and illegal hunting. The extent of illegal hunting was mapped by utilising questionnaires distributed to Village Game Scouts employed in five of the Project villages. Our research indicates that the cropping operation is not economically sustainable and makes only a minor economic contribution to the Project villages compared to illegal hunting. Furthermore, cropping quotas are small, utilization of quotas low, and the level of community involvement limited. Illegal hunting was extensive around both Project and other villages. We suggest that SRCP discard the inefficient cropping operation and instead concentrate on diversifying income opportunities for the Project villages.
This paper examines the material and symbolic roles played by national parks in British colonial attempts to impose a particular way of seeing the landscape and to reshape African ways of being. The narrative concerns the history of the establishment of what was meant to be the first national park in British-ruled Africa, Serengeti. It is based almost exclusively on archival documents from the early years of the British mandate to the eve of Tanganyikan (now Tanzania) independence. It highlights and examines the tensions and contradictions which were produced in the recasting of Tanganyikan society and landscape. These tensions and contradictions intersected at Serengeti with the Africans resident there, particularly the Maasai, caught in their net. -from Author
The transnational nature of environmental problems has highlighted the need for cooperation between nation‐states. In southern Africa the field of wildlife conservation has already witnessed a growth in multinational conservation schemes. The Trans Border Conservation Area or ‘superpark’ which incorporates parts of Zimbabwe, Mozambique and South Africa is a good example. While the ecological and economic basis of the superpark has been agreed, political factors have slowed its implementation. This article explores the political context of the superpark proposal within Zimbabwe, and analyses why the Zimbabwean state has proved to be less enthusiastic than its partners. In particular, it examines the internal disagreements in the ruling party and in the Parks Department which have proved to be significant stumbling blocks for wildlife conservation. The troubled history of the area covered by the superpark is investigated, including the impact of military forces from the three partner states and poaching operations in the 1980s. All of these factors have impacted on the Zimbabwean state's willingness to cede control to a transnational park authority.
National parks and wildlife sanctuaries are under threat both physically and as a social ideal in Indonesia following the collapse of the Suharto New Order regime (1967-1998). Opinion-makers perceive parks as representing elite special interest, constraining economic development and/or indigenous rights. We asked what was the original intention and who were the players behind the Netherlands Indies colonial government policy of establishing nature 'monuments' and wildlife sanctuaries. Based on a review of international conservation literature, three inter-related themes are explored: a) the emergence in the 1860-1910 period of new worldviews on the human-nature relationship in western culture; b) the emergence of new conservation values and the translation of these into public policy goals, namely designation of protected areas and enforcement of wildlife legislation, by international lobbying networks of prominent men; and 3) the adoption of these policies by the Netherlands Indies government.
This paper provides evidence that the root motivations of protected area policy are noble, namely: 1) a desire to preserve sites with special meaning for intellectual and aesthetic contemplation of nature; and 2) acceptance that the human conquest of nature carries with it a moral responsibility to ensure the survival of threatened life forms. Although these perspectives derive from elite society of the American East Coast and Western Europe at the end of the nineteenth century, they are international values to which civilised nations and societies aspire. It would be a tragedy if Indonesia rejects these social values and protected areas because subsequent management polices have associated protected areas with aspects of the colonial and New Order regime that contemporary society seeks to reform.
The black rhino will be exterminated soon in northern Tanzania if poaching is not stopped, says the author, after surveying eight national parks and game reserves, either from the air or on the ground, or both. Tanzania is making great efforts to stop the poaching, but essential equipment is desperately short, and much more outside help is needed.
In the Amboseli area of southern Kenya, efforts to resolve conflicts between Maasai pastoralists and wildlife have been made by conservationists and government authorities since the 1950s. In 1977, a new programme was initiated to involve the Maasai in direct benefits from a National Park which was created in their critical grazing lands. This article analyses the problems encountered in Amboseli with a brief summary of their historical background and a more detailed description of the recent developments. The discussion centres on the specific circumstances of Amboseli, but should apply more generally to the problem of reconciling nature conservation with indigenous peoples' land tenure and use. -from Author
The current interest in community-based wildlife management and wildlands development in sub-Saharan Africa must be viewed within the context of evolving approaches to natural resource preservation. An approach to reconciling rural development and conservation has been advocated through community-based wildlife management. A number of projects emphasizing this approach have been established in recent years, and many more are currently being set up. The following chapter discusses the economic potential of community-based wildlife management in Africa as the "new phase' of conservation-led development. Two examples, the CAMPFIRE programme in Zimbabwe and the Luangwe Integrated Resource Development Project (LIRDP) in Zambia, are discussed to illustrate some of the potential as well as the problems of such schemes. -from Author
The local pastoral herdsmen in this part of southern Kenya exerted increasing pressures on wildlife because it contributed nothing to their own economy even though the value of wildlife nationally through tourism was considerable. A 15-yr program is described which attempts to create an integrated use of the ecosystem by including the Masai landowners in the benefits from the national park. -from Author
T
he concept of sustainability first came to public notice in Wes Jackson’s work on agriculture in the late 1970s (Jackson 1980), Lester Brown’s Building a Sustainable Society (Brown 1980), and The World Conservation Strategy (Allen 1980). The Brundtland Commission made it a central feature of its 1987 report, defining it as meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to do the same (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987). Their definition confused sustainable growth, an oxymoron, and sustainable development, a possibility. Ambiguities notwithstanding, the concept of sustainability has become the keystone of the global dialogue about the human future. But what exactly do we intend to sustain, and what will that require of us?
Describes the origins, development and current status of the nature conservation movement in the UK, with an examination of the ways in which the various pressure and interest groups and different institutional and (quasi)governmental organisations have reached similar or disparate conclusions. The National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act (1949) and the Wildlife and Countryside Act (1981) are key points in the story, but much has been enacted before, between and since these pieces of legislation. Relations between conservationists and farmers, foresters, fisheries and urban growth are a recurrent theme. The author queries the achievements of both government and conservation bodies at a time of global conscience and the would-be greening of the environment. -P.J.Jarvis
Conservation-with-Development (CWD) has been taken up by conservation bodies and development agencies as a way of maintaining biological diversity through promoting the development and involvement of local people. One of the longest running purpose-designed CWD projects is located in the East Usambara Mountains of Tanzania, which support an important and rich forest ecosystem containing numerous endemic species of flora and fauna. The area also maintains a human population which is increasingly turning to the forest for its livelihood. The cases for conservation and for development, and how far the two objectives are mutually compatible, are discussed. The East Usambaras Agricultural Development and Environmental Conservation project is involved in a diversity of activities, ranging from village industry to forest protection, and demonstrates not only the difficulty of managing such a complex project but also some of the conflicts between environmental conservation and participatory rural development. We conclude that CWD projects are complicated, lack a clearly-defined rationale and methodology and need to be made more distinct from multi-sectoral integrated rural development approaches.
African river valleys have been major targets for rural development planners, and today many are dammed and have associated irrigation schemes on the floodplains. Others have been exploited for urban and industrial uses. These schemes are discussed and contrasted with the indigenous economies of sub-Saharan Africa and the strengths and diversity of African's responses to their water needs. Chapter 2 gives a general summary of African economies and agriculture, and the nature of indigenous technical knowledge. The following chapter presents basic information on Africa's environment, rainfall and rivers and how they are used by Africans. This analysis is extended in the next chapter, which focuses specifically on floodplain wetlands and their importance to the agricultural and food systems. Chapters 5 and 6 discuss river basin planning and dam construction, respectively. Chapter 7 looks at the record of large-scale irrigation schemes; the final chapter discusses the possibility of developing indigenous irrigation systems, rehabilitating some of the large failed projects, and the prospect for introducing controlled flood events on dammed rivers. -M.Amos
Human intervention in natural ecosystems was mapped using a three-category system indicating different levels of anthropogenic disturbance: undisturbed, partially disturbed, and human dominated. Source data were transferred onto a set of 10 equal-area base maps covering the world. The maps were digitized for analysis. The surface area of each region and the proportion in each of the three disturbance categories was determined, as well as a derived index of remaining natural habitat. Nearly 90 million km2 of undisturbed land remains on the planet, roughly 52% of earth's terrestrial area. However, the habitable portion of the planet, with areas of rock, ice, and barren land removed, is nearly three-quarters disturbed in some way. The biological significance of the global pattern of disturbance was assessed by examining disturbance categories for the eight biogeographic realms of Udvardy. Methodological advancements of this study over earlier efforts included an improved mapping resolution, and expanded categorization system, and employment of an ecologically-based definition of habitat. -from Authors
In the debt-ridden, high-population-growth, resource-mining states of the Congo Basin, conservation of biodiversity is seldom the primary concern of national policy makers or of local resource users. Moreover, the recurring costs of managing protected areas and the opportunity costs of forgoing logging and farming to maintain protected areas are a substantial net drain on national and local economies. Consequently, it is becoming increasingly important that protected areas generate, from user fees or donor contributions, sufficient funds to offset the costs of maintaining them. Government and donor investment currently meet less than 30 per cent of the estimated recurring costs required to manage the protected-area network within central African countries effectively, and cover none of the growing opportunity costs. Nature tourism, the fastest growing sector of the $US3 trillion (3 million million) a year global tourism, industry, may offer a source of revenue to help fill this gap in funds. Congo Basin national parks and reserves harbour many charismatic animals (okapi, lowland gorilla, mandrills, bongo, forest elephant) that are likely to attract tourists, and as a result many protected-area managers are sinking capital into the development of tourist infrastructure. This paper reviews the evidence for ecotourism's capacity to generate revenue for protected-area management and appraises the financial viability of nature tourism in the Congo Basin.
Oil pollution of the sea used to be caused mainly by deliberate dumping of waste oil. Today this problem could be almost mastered by the ‘load on top’ system, but the chief cause remains accidents to tankers such as the Torrey Canyon. In this report on the Rome conference on the subject, held in October 1968, Lieutenant Colonel Boyle, former FPS secretary and a member of the British Advisory Committee on Oil Pollution of the Sea who represented the FPS, describes the working of the ‘load on top’ system and the discussions on the new problem. Lord Jellicoe, Chairman of the British Committee, presided at the conference.
This paper outlines the concept of environmental sustain-ability (ES), shows why it is important to make it a top-priority goal, and why that will be difficult to attain but essential. The ES equation of impact = population × affluence × technology, is outlined. When the world approaches stability in both population size and the throughput of energy and materials per unit of production, we may indeed be approaching sustainability. As the world's population is apt to double every 40 years, and as only a few countries ( e.g. Japan and Sweden) have managed so far to reduce the energy intensity of production, we are hurtling away from sustainability rather than even approaching it. Environmental sustainability can be approached by implementing four priorities: first, by using sound microeconomic means; second, by using sound macroeconomics to differentiate between use and liquidation of natural capital by means of environmental accounting; third, by using environmental assessment to incorporate environmental costs into project appraisal; and fourth—until the first three become fully achieved—by following operational guidelines for sustainability. Thus:
1) Sound Microeconomic Means involve: (1) Getting the prices right: to reflect full social marginal opportunity cost; use the ‘full cost’ principle, or the ‘cradle-to-grave’ approach. (2) Repealing perverse fiscal incentives. (3) Strengthening the ‘polluter pays’ principles. (4) Including non-monetary values in project justification. (5) Adopting the transparency principle that markets can function efficiently only if relevant information is available at low cost. This involves the participation of people in decisions affecting them, and advertising who is polluting what and by how much.
2) Sound Macroeconomics by Environmental Accounting is essential to discern decapitalization and to shift to using income rather than drawing down capital assets. Environmental accounting clarifies what is liquidation of natural capital from what is income. This is essential because decapitalization is frequently confused as income. Environmental accounting warns us when liquidation of potentially renewable resources exceeds their regeneration rates, such as in many forests.
3) Environmental Assessment is part of the project selection process. The purpose of EA is to ensure that the development options under consideration are environmentally sustainable. Any environmental consequences should be addressed in project selection, planning, siting, and design. EAs identify ways of preventing, minimizing, mitigating, or compensating for, adverse impacts.
4) Sustainability Guidelines: Until the first three rules are heeded and duly acted on, the following guidelines will be necessary: 1, Output Rule: —waste emissions from a project should be within the assimilative capacity of the local environment to absorb without unacceptable de-gradation of its future waste-absorptive capacity; and 2, Input Guide: —harvest rates or renewable resource inputs should be within regenerative capacity of the natural system that generates them. Depletion rates of non-renewable resource inputs should not exceed the rate at which renewable substitutes are developed by human invention and investment.
Project Tiger was launched by the World Wildlife Fund in 1972. The author, who was closely involved in the project, examines the progress ten years later.
The wildlife of the Jordanian deserts was shot out in the 1950s. As a first step towards restoring it, the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature in Jordan has set up a captive breeding unit at its Shaumari Reserve, eight miles from the great oasis of Azraq. Though the first occupants are likely to be gazelles, by the time this issue appears there may well be four male Arabian oryx also. These, the foundation of what it is hoped will be the first captive herd of Arabian oryx in Arabia deriving from Operation Oryx, have been presented to Jordan by the Trustees of the World Herd of Arabian Oryx, now located at Phoenix and San Diego Zoos in the USA. There are a number of other captive herds of local origin already in the Arabian peninsula, including the well known one in Qatar.
The whale has become a symbol of world concern for the preservation of wildlife, concern mostly by people who have not the faintest idea that there is more than one kind of whale, and who do not care about these distinctions anyway. So on the opening day of this year's International Whaling Commission meeting, June 25th, in London, readers of The Times were greeted with a half-page advertisement illustrated with a vertical picture of the blue whale, and titled ‘One is killed every 20 minutes. Is this carnage really necessary?’. The ensuing appeal for the implementation of the Stockholm Conference's call for a ten-year moratorium on commercial whaling was signed by twenty distinguished conservationists, headed by TRH Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands and the Duke of Edinburgh, and nine conservation bodies, including the Fauna Preservation Society, which contributed £200 towards the cost. The FPS Chairman, Sir Peter Scott, and two Vice-Presidents, Sir Frank Fraser Darling and Sir Julian Huxley, were among the individual signatories, who also included the President and Director-General of IUCN, Commander Jacques Cousteau, Professors Jean Dorst and Rene Dubos, Dr Paul Ehrlich, Dr Thor Heyerdahl, Dr Konrad Lorenz, Dr Sicco Mansholt, and the Chairman of the Trustees of the British Museum (Natural History), Dr J. E. Smith.
A long required and most urgent need in the education of the “Children of the Country” is being made possible by the generosity and far-sightedness of the Ndola Lottery Board Committee. They have made a grant of £5,000 to our Game Preservation and Hunting Association for the construction of a permanent camp in the Kafue National Park.
Independence for Malaysia and the resulting hostilities with Indonesia have led to changes affecting wildlife as well as humans and not always for the worse. Not only was the smuggling of animals via Singapore stopped dead, which particularly affected orang utans, and the sale of firearms and ammunition drastically controlled, with already noticeable effects on some animal populations, but the new leaders feel strongly about national assets going out of the country, whether antiques or animals, with the result that more has been done for wildlife in the past two years man in decades before. The real killer, says the author, who is Curator of the Sarawak Museum, is timber felling with vastly accelerated techniques which take machines up to 1000 ft. and lay whole jungles by the square mile a day.
It is now feasible to eradicate nearly all the existing foci of tsetse fly from Africa, by means of insecticides. The operation would greatly reduce trypanosomiasis but, even if carried out to completion, would not eliminate it. Advantages would fall to cattle graziers and meat eaters in the cities, not to the vast majority of rural Africans. There are now good theoretical reasons for suggesting that tsetse eradication causes serious ecological degradation involving climatic change. The testing of this hypothesis by satellite scanning should be given priority over the funding of further large scale eradication schemes.
The paper marks the fiftieth anniversary of the wartime beginnings of the modern nature-conservation movement in the U.K. First a Conference on Nature Preservation in Post-war Reconstruction, and then a Nature Reserves Investigation Committee and a special committee of the British Ecological Society, explored the concept and requirements of a series of national nature reserves. Lists of such sites were drawn up. Through the increasing participation of ecologists in such discussions, the word “conservation” was adopted to imply a more positive, forward-looking approach to nature protection. It was recommended that the reserves should be made the responsibility of the science, rather than the planning, sector of Government, as part of a wider institutional development of post-war ecological research in the U.K. The appointment of the Nature Conservancy in 1949 marked the realisation of those aspirations.
Traces Western conservationism from it roots in colonial exploitation during the mideighteenth century when scientists employed by trading companies voiced concern over large-scale ecological changes. Indicates that our contemporary understanding of the threat to the global environment is a reassertion of ideas that reached maturity over a century ago. (JJK)
The Australian nature conservation movement is effectively entering its second century of existence and this transition has prompted a degree of reflection about the strategies used hitherto. After going through boom years - as part of a broader environmental movement - from the 1970s until the early 1990s, a more difficult political environment in the second half of the 1990s has sparked a semi-public discussion about priorities and future strategies. This article argues that the debate about future conservation strategies needs to tackle two important legacies that have become increasingly problematic: a lingering 'frontier mentality' that fosters a separation between people and 'pristine nature'; and a heavy reliance on scientific expertise and rational arguments for conservation. This dual legacy has blinded the movement to the aesthetic appeal of the romantic philosophical tradition in ecology and the importance of sensuous, embodied experiences of the 'more than human' world. In rethinking the legacy of the romantic philosopher Henry David Thoreau, the article argues for a shift of emphasis from wilderness to wildness in order to bring conservation home to more people. It suggests that we can learn from the ability of Australian Aborigines to listen to the land in order to 'sing up' the stories that are embedded in landscapes. Learning to read and create landscape stories provides creative ways of building more affective bonds between people and the land. Non-rational approaches to nature conservation can help to re-enchant conservation 'work'.
This article relates the circumstances in which, as part of the post‐war reconstruction effort, the newly‐conceded responsibilities of the state for protecting wildlife and the landscape were allocated respectively to a scientific body, the Nature Conservancy, and a planning body, the National Parks Commission. As well as pressing for effective powers to protect the countryside from damaging forms of development, more positive ways were sought for managing wildlife, landscape and the recreational resource. The evolving relationship with agriculture, the most important form of rural land‐use, is outlined. An account is given of how the three basic assumptions of the post‐war nature‐conservation movement came to be challenged, namely by the separation of the executive and research responsibilities for wildlife conservation in 1973, the break‐up of the UK approach in 1990, and misgivings as to how far the state should be directly responsible for acquiring and managing the expanding series of National Nature Reserves.
This paper traces the history of attempts to introduce National Parks into Scotland. In so doing it identifies some of the alternatives that have been considered and adopted. Finally, the paper analyses the failure of the movement to introduce National Parks into Scotland.
Much has been written on the initiatives leading up to the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949, but relatively little on the ways in which the National Parks Commission and Nature Conservancy subsequently established themselves amongst other user‐interests in the countryside. This paper disputes the general assumption that the Nature Conservancy operated in a largely apolitical climate, acquiring and managing nature reserves on essentially scientific criteria. Particular attention is given to the assumptions on which the statutory powers of the Nature Conservancy were granted, the changing political context within which the Nature Conservancy acquired its network of nature reserves, and the changing understanding of the management needs of nature reserves. Consideration is also given to the attempts made to give tangible effect to the concept of enhancement and enrichment in the distinctive landscapes of nature reserves. Insights from archival evidence help to explain the urgency with which ‘conservation research’ came to be promoted by the early 1960s, and place in clearer perspective the more overtly political influences exerted on nature conservation in later decades.
Seventy years ago the population of Southern Rhodesia was only about 500,000. The inhabitants occupied the land according to their tribal customs, and were mainly hunters and pastoralists. In those days the whole country abounded with wild life. Then western civilization came to the country, bringing with it advanced agricultural techniques, medical science and the western system of law. Within thirty years vast changes and development took place. The indigenous population trebled: industries, particularly mining, sprang up all over the country and around these industries towns were built with the resultant network of road and rail communications. But, following the pattern of development seen in so many countries, Rhodesia's natural resources were being squandered and destroyed, in some cases through lack of knowledge, in others wantonly. Nevertheless, even in the 1920's a few people, supported by the Government, did make some provision for the conservation of wild life and in 1927 the first game reserve was established at Wankie. By the 1930's, however, it was obvious that other resources, particularly the soil, were being lost at an alarming rate. Again a few far-sighted people, led by Water Court Judge Mcllwaine, stirred up public opinion, the Governor appointing a commission of enquiry into the extent to which the natural resources were being squandered. The outcome of this enquiry was the establishment of the Natural Resources Board, constituted by Act of Parliament which, in essence, recognized the Board as the public trustee for the natural resources of the country. The Board has extremely wide powers and can give orders to the owners, occupiers or users of any land to adopt such measures as it may deem necessary for the conservation and protection of the resources. Whilst an appeal to the court against such orders is provided for, the Board relies upon persuasion rather than compulsion and depends upon the goodwill and common-sense of the people to ensure a future both for themselves and for those who are to follow.
In the early 1800s the once abundant North Atlantic right whale was believed to be extinct. But by mid-century the species had been ‘rediscovered’, and hunting was resumed until 1918, when the whales were again in trouble. In 1935 all right whales became fully protected by an international convention, and in the 1950s the North Atlantic population was once again ‘rediscovered’. Today, after nearly 50 years of protection and slow recovery, the author assesses the present status of the North Atlantic population. Surveys showed disappointing results until in 1980 a survey of the lower Bay of Fundy (prompted by the threat of an oil refinery being built there) revealed surprisingly high numbers. Another survey in 1981, in which the author also took part, has shown the Grand Manan Island region to be a summer and autumn assembly site for at least several dozen of these endangered whales, including a number of cows and calves. This may be a key area for the North Atlantic right whale's survival.
The National Commission for Wildlife Conservation and Development was established in 1986 to oversee all wildlife conservation programmes in Saudi Arabia. The Arabian oryx Oryx leucoryx is one of the flagship species of the Saudi Arabian reintroduction policy. It has been captive-bred since 1986 at the National Wildlife Research Center near Taif. With the creation of a network of protected areas in the former distribution range of the species, attention has shifted to the release of captive-bred oryx into Mahazat as-Sayd and 'Uruq Bani Ma'arid reserves. Similar programmes carried out in other countries of the Arabian Peninsula underline the need for regional co-operation and pan-Arabic public awareness programmes, in addition to captive-breeding and reintroduction projects.
Very few reserves exist to protect the arid-lands fauna of West Africa, particularly in the sub-desert zone, and the large mammals, such as addax, scimitar-horned oryx and dama gazelle are disappearing. New reserves are planned but they could be too late. Many permanent waterholes have been dug, and the nomads (and their livestock) tend to stay near them, depriving the wild animals of their traditional dry-season haunts. Firearms have made hunting easier, and the slow-running desert animals cannot compete with motor vehicles – many die of heat exhaustion, calves are abandoned in the chase and unborn young aborted. Rational utilisation of wildlife could be of immense benefit to the people, but protection is the first priority. To achieve this FPS and PTES have launched an appeal for the scimitarhorned oryx.
From its earliest years, the Society's journal has carried reports on the tsetse problem in Africa. Between the 1920s and 1960s, attempts to eradicate the flies from many parts of the country resulted in the slaughter of 1.3 million game animals and extensive bush clearance, which permanently destroyed wildlife habitat. By the early 1970s, the use of insecticides had largely replaced these drastic techniques, but this, in its turn, with the environmental side-effects, caused much concern amongst wildlife conservationists. The authors review the history of tsetse control and discuss the new, safer methods that have been developed, as well as others still under trial. It is clear, however, that tsetse eradication will continue to be controversial. The development of safer and environmentally acceptable techniques does not solve a more fundamental problem—the wise use of Africa's land. Clearing the land of tsetse can open the path to its ruin by unsustainable pastoral encroachment. It is of interest that in April 1985, the EEC governments forced the EEC Commission to modify its forthcoming programme of tsetse fly eradication in four countries by insisting that environmentally harmful methods using DDT should not be employed. The Commission was also forced to include a three-year project on area development planning—land-use considerations were originally not included in its proposals.