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The Myth of Wild Africa: Conservation Without Illusion
Most people would feel a great loss if elephants, rhinos, or gorillas were to become extinct, but would we willingly move our families, change our means of earning a living, and disrupt our culture to prevent their extinction? People living in rural Africa are being asked to do just this by the world community. The Myth of Wild Africa explores a joint African/Western approach to conservation with the goal of returning control to the African nations.
320 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1992
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
September 28, 2012
The titular supposition of “The Myth of Wild Africa” is that the cultural concepts of the West, combined with the full might of empire, have shaped an inhumane and counterproductive conservation policy in Africa. The story plays out at many scales and in many ways – from the gross idea that Africa contains large tracts of human-free “wilderness” to the narrative of noble scientists and rangers teaming up against greedy poachers. Informed by exoticism and by the general “Wilderness Myth” - explained so richly in William Cronon's essay http://www.williamcronon.net/writing/..., Westerners assume that it is morally right to create and defend areas where humans are not important members of the ecology.
The problems with this idea are manifold. First of all, they seem to be backfiring in many cases. If the mission and values of Western conservation are taken at face value, the national park model still fails. Communities who formerly lived in the park and now live on its borders are key players in determining its success or failure in areas with limited resources. If an evicted community chooses to continue hunting in their traditional forests, they are “poachers,” but many African parks are not able to effectively stop their activities. The imposition of hunting and logging bans has been noted to inspire cut-and-run harvesting that is uncharacteristic of traditionally sustainable regimes. Sustainable harvesting regimes are premised on the assumption that the resource is being conserved for future use, so it is understandable that users would abandon their limits when faced with the permanent loss of the resource.
Further, national parks are not confined systems. The animals that migrate out of Tarangire National Park cross into Maasai territory in the wet season. There, they can be hunted, and they can suffer negative interactions with farmers and loss of habitat from farms. Maasai, former pastoralists who relied on the Tarangire River for dry-season pasture, are now forced to overgraze and farm in the areas outside the park, so the exclusion of Maasai from the park was detrimental to wildlife overall.
Thus, McShane and Adams advocate the reestablishment and support of previously existing sustainable harvesting regimes. The establishment of parks itself disrupts these regimes, but unfortunately those who believe native land uses are dangerous to biodiversity seem to have a point. Insofar as the largely sustainable land use regimes of indigenous communities were disrupted by the slave and ivory trade, then later colonial policies that removed cultural and biological constraints on population growth and caused widespread desperate poverty, modern indigenous Africans often have little alternative to overgrazing, hunting in excess, and farming marginal lands. It seems obvious that the just and sustainable solution here is not to forcibly prevent impoverished peoples from accessing their last meager chance to survive.
Especially when the benefits and costs of conservation are so clearly skewed away from local communities. While access to key resources is removed, most of the costs of living with wildlife must still be born. Lions take cattle. Elephants trample crops but farmers can do little to defend their land – people who live with African elephants seem to dislike them rather a lot. The benefits, on the other hand, go to Westerners and elite Africans. Revenue from tourism goes to those with capital to build hotels and to taxes. Westerners benefit from the opportunity to visit landscapes managed to their vision – one that does not include people.
So the solution is to establish sustainable use – humans as integral ecosystem engineers, forging long-term relationships that are mutually sustainable if not actually beneficial. That may include hunting elephants for ivory or practicing long-term shifting cultivation in the forest. It certainly includes hunting “bushmeat” and gathering food and medicinal plants. But how are such systems to be monitored and evaluated? Clearly there is an important role for Western science to play. However, the role of science hasn't been so straightforward either. The sections on scientific uses were among the book's most interesting.
Scientists have entered so deeply into the standard conservation narrative that they are as “African” now as lions themselves. But scientific discoveries do not always fulfill their purpose in informing conservation policy. Scientists apparently only rarely give concrete and helpful recommendations to park managers, or at least some managers perceive this to be the case. Managers must make hard decisions in real time, while scientists not integrated into the park structure don't have that investment. They are free to withhold judgment until further research can elucidate things. The solution, of course, is to have scientists invested in the park for the long term. While some few Western scientists do this, most simply do their PhD research or whatever and go back to the 'States for a teaching job.
Few Africans, least of all those from the communities near the park, have been trained in the scientific methods that could really help their communities discern productive and sustainable uses of resources. Science can be obtrusive and destructive ecologically, as when ecologists killed many grazing animals to sample the contents of their stomachs, but it is perhaps most problematic when it siphons money away from the day to day running costs of the park. Perhaps in part because it earns scientific knowledge to sate the curiosity (and assuage the guilt) of the NatGeo audience and in part because it helps Westerners advance their careers, there is much more money available to study what conservation techniques could be used in the future than there is to implement techniques that have been well-established.
The book is a well-written and digestible exposition of some of the ideas I've recapped above. It suffers a bit from its vignette format, since the basic story gets a bit tired by the end and there is no overall arc that pushes the argument through the last few chapters. I was rather disappointed by the lack of specific footnotes/citations. While this was clearly done to cater to a reading public that sees such things as the trappings of jargon-laden and abstruse scholarship, citations are there to make things easier, not harder. They open doors to further reading and give you a hint as to when the authors are “elaborating” and when they are sticking close to their evidence. All that aside, there are good characters and good discussions in the book, and it helps to raise a lot of interesting questions. It also provides a nice overview of some intellectual and environmental history in the first few chapters (this is where I felt the lack of citations the most). It is not as good as Igoe's “Conservation and Globalization,” but it is a good complement to it.
The problems with this idea are manifold. First of all, they seem to be backfiring in many cases. If the mission and values of Western conservation are taken at face value, the national park model still fails. Communities who formerly lived in the park and now live on its borders are key players in determining its success or failure in areas with limited resources. If an evicted community chooses to continue hunting in their traditional forests, they are “poachers,” but many African parks are not able to effectively stop their activities. The imposition of hunting and logging bans has been noted to inspire cut-and-run harvesting that is uncharacteristic of traditionally sustainable regimes. Sustainable harvesting regimes are premised on the assumption that the resource is being conserved for future use, so it is understandable that users would abandon their limits when faced with the permanent loss of the resource.
Further, national parks are not confined systems. The animals that migrate out of Tarangire National Park cross into Maasai territory in the wet season. There, they can be hunted, and they can suffer negative interactions with farmers and loss of habitat from farms. Maasai, former pastoralists who relied on the Tarangire River for dry-season pasture, are now forced to overgraze and farm in the areas outside the park, so the exclusion of Maasai from the park was detrimental to wildlife overall.
Thus, McShane and Adams advocate the reestablishment and support of previously existing sustainable harvesting regimes. The establishment of parks itself disrupts these regimes, but unfortunately those who believe native land uses are dangerous to biodiversity seem to have a point. Insofar as the largely sustainable land use regimes of indigenous communities were disrupted by the slave and ivory trade, then later colonial policies that removed cultural and biological constraints on population growth and caused widespread desperate poverty, modern indigenous Africans often have little alternative to overgrazing, hunting in excess, and farming marginal lands. It seems obvious that the just and sustainable solution here is not to forcibly prevent impoverished peoples from accessing their last meager chance to survive.
Especially when the benefits and costs of conservation are so clearly skewed away from local communities. While access to key resources is removed, most of the costs of living with wildlife must still be born. Lions take cattle. Elephants trample crops but farmers can do little to defend their land – people who live with African elephants seem to dislike them rather a lot. The benefits, on the other hand, go to Westerners and elite Africans. Revenue from tourism goes to those with capital to build hotels and to taxes. Westerners benefit from the opportunity to visit landscapes managed to their vision – one that does not include people.
So the solution is to establish sustainable use – humans as integral ecosystem engineers, forging long-term relationships that are mutually sustainable if not actually beneficial. That may include hunting elephants for ivory or practicing long-term shifting cultivation in the forest. It certainly includes hunting “bushmeat” and gathering food and medicinal plants. But how are such systems to be monitored and evaluated? Clearly there is an important role for Western science to play. However, the role of science hasn't been so straightforward either. The sections on scientific uses were among the book's most interesting.
Scientists have entered so deeply into the standard conservation narrative that they are as “African” now as lions themselves. But scientific discoveries do not always fulfill their purpose in informing conservation policy. Scientists apparently only rarely give concrete and helpful recommendations to park managers, or at least some managers perceive this to be the case. Managers must make hard decisions in real time, while scientists not integrated into the park structure don't have that investment. They are free to withhold judgment until further research can elucidate things. The solution, of course, is to have scientists invested in the park for the long term. While some few Western scientists do this, most simply do their PhD research or whatever and go back to the 'States for a teaching job.
Few Africans, least of all those from the communities near the park, have been trained in the scientific methods that could really help their communities discern productive and sustainable uses of resources. Science can be obtrusive and destructive ecologically, as when ecologists killed many grazing animals to sample the contents of their stomachs, but it is perhaps most problematic when it siphons money away from the day to day running costs of the park. Perhaps in part because it earns scientific knowledge to sate the curiosity (and assuage the guilt) of the NatGeo audience and in part because it helps Westerners advance their careers, there is much more money available to study what conservation techniques could be used in the future than there is to implement techniques that have been well-established.
The book is a well-written and digestible exposition of some of the ideas I've recapped above. It suffers a bit from its vignette format, since the basic story gets a bit tired by the end and there is no overall arc that pushes the argument through the last few chapters. I was rather disappointed by the lack of specific footnotes/citations. While this was clearly done to cater to a reading public that sees such things as the trappings of jargon-laden and abstruse scholarship, citations are there to make things easier, not harder. They open doors to further reading and give you a hint as to when the authors are “elaborating” and when they are sticking close to their evidence. All that aside, there are good characters and good discussions in the book, and it helps to raise a lot of interesting questions. It also provides a nice overview of some intellectual and environmental history in the first few chapters (this is where I felt the lack of citations the most). It is not as good as Igoe's “Conservation and Globalization,” but it is a good complement to it.
March 20, 2021
Had a dream about trying to save the elephants from the Maasai people. I failed.
August 27, 2024
I revisited this book from last reading it in college around 2000. Back then the views of wilderness were philosophically starting to swing away the notion of wilderness being separate from humanity. This is a historically Christian position stemming from the idea of Dominion over the natural world.
This wonky book full of acronyms and policy also reflects the viewpoint of the changing view of “wildness.” Although we still, as a whole, in the Western world the idea of otherness with Nature, Africa has a high regard for their wildlife and are even more protective than even Western nations. Through fits and starts of democracy taking hold in certain countries on the an African component, they are using governmental representation to protect their land and wildlife, but in their own way. Hopefully that trend continues. It’s been 25+ years since this book is as published. I look forward to delving into the current models of conservation on the African continent.
This wonky book full of acronyms and policy also reflects the viewpoint of the changing view of “wildness.” Although we still, as a whole, in the Western world the idea of otherness with Nature, Africa has a high regard for their wildlife and are even more protective than even Western nations. Through fits and starts of democracy taking hold in certain countries on the an African component, they are using governmental representation to protect their land and wildlife, but in their own way. Hopefully that trend continues. It’s been 25+ years since this book is as published. I look forward to delving into the current models of conservation on the African continent.
March 9, 2025
"Africans know the way best."
Like how the history of conservation is covered in each chapter, then thoughts for discussion near end. It is good to point out people living on reserves can't subsistence hunt without poaching charges. I've never thought of that: I thought areas mapped out just for animals.
Like how the history of conservation is covered in each chapter, then thoughts for discussion near end. It is good to point out people living on reserves can't subsistence hunt without poaching charges. I've never thought of that: I thought areas mapped out just for animals.
February 15, 2025
Very interesting read about the complexity of Africa and the many varying views of how the Wildlife and Wild Places should be managed
October 19, 2016
This is one of the most englightening boks on conservation that I have read. Provides a very nuanced and balanced view on the conflicts and tensions between conservationists, local people, governments and various other stakeholders. Among the various important points, the below are some that I rememberd and have noted down:
1. The conflict of western conservation practices of separating nature from man and designating protected sanctuaries with the local traditions of people using nature to meet their ends. Hence, people feel wronged when they are prevented from carrying out their daily activities on their 'own' land.
2. How investigation is far more effective that patrols. It is a smarter way to allocate resources. I feel this can also be reapplied to India to help control the menace of poaching.
3. The general disconnect between scientific research and conservation. How can we ensure that research has direct management implication to help wardens?
4. Example of Dian Fossey and mountain gorillas. An example of how inclusive conservation worked better than the preservationist approach advocated by Fossey.
1. The conflict of western conservation practices of separating nature from man and designating protected sanctuaries with the local traditions of people using nature to meet their ends. Hence, people feel wronged when they are prevented from carrying out their daily activities on their 'own' land.
2. How investigation is far more effective that patrols. It is a smarter way to allocate resources. I feel this can also be reapplied to India to help control the menace of poaching.
3. The general disconnect between scientific research and conservation. How can we ensure that research has direct management implication to help wardens?
4. Example of Dian Fossey and mountain gorillas. An example of how inclusive conservation worked better than the preservationist approach advocated by Fossey.
April 7, 2013
Fascinating and thought-provoking. Even if you don't agree with the authors on everything (although I hope most people involved in conservation are aware enough of the nuances to see things beyond black-and-white "yup" or "nope" on the issues), they present points that are extremely important to think about. This book played into my combination of interests in conservation and anthropology and I felt like I came away with a lot of food for thought. A caveat is that it was written almost 20 years ago, so you'll probably want to research the current conservation status of the countries/parks profiled to see how their trajectories have developed in the last two decades.
February 19, 2010
Good overview of the history of conservation in Africa. Learned a lot about the changing perception towards nature on the continent and the co-development of safari hunting and western-led conservation. While I don't really disagree with the authors' opinions, I do deduct stars because the author's agenda is overly pro-community. Again, I can't disagree with the increased involvement of communities in conservation, I am not comfortable with the biased perspective.
December 28, 2009
Still a useful and interesting read, especially on colonial & conservation history. I hope a lot of the attitudes it describes have since changed. It leaves me wondering what has happened to the Zimbabwean projects that are described with such hopefulness.
September 10, 2008
the name says it all.
March 6, 2009
Interesting, and I learned a lot, but very outdated and repetitive in chapters.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews