White Man's Game: Saving Animals, Rebuilding Eden, and Other Myths of Conservation in Africa

by Stephanie Hanes

A probing examination of Western conservation efforts in Africa, where our feel-good stories belie a troubling reality

The stunningly beautiful Gorongosa National Park, once the crown jewel of Mozambique, was nearly destroyed by decades of civil war. It looked like a perfect place for Western revive the park and tourists would return, a win-win outcome for the environment and the impoverished villagers living in the area. So why did some researchers find the local communities actually getting hungrier, sicker, and poorer as the project went on? And why did efforts to bring back wildlife become far more difficult than expected?

In pursuit of answers, Stephanie Hanes takes readers on a vivid safari across southern Africa, from the shark-filled waters off Cape Agulhas to a reserve trying to save endangered wild dogs. She traces the tangled history of Western missionaries, explorers, and do-gooders in Africa, from Stanley and Livingstone to Teddy Roosevelt, from Bono and the Live Aid festivals to Greg Carr, the American benefactor of Gorongosa. And she examines the larger problems that arise when Westerners try to “fix” complex, messy situations in the developing world, acting with best intentions yet potentially overlooking the wishes of the people who live there. Beneath the uplifting stories we tell ourselves about helping Africans, she shows, often lies a dramatic misunderstanding of what the locals actually need and want.

A gripping narrative of environmentalists and insurgents, poachers and tycoons, elephants and angry spirits, White Man’s Game profoundly challenges the way we think about philanthropy and conservation.

Genres: Africa, Nonfiction, Environment, Science, Conservation, Nature

304 pages, Hardcover

First published August 16, 2016

Reviews

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

A powerful reminder that we all carry out own narratives, and all too often fail to recognize those of others.

[Camille McCarthy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. I would put it together with "No More Heroes," "This Changes Everything," and "Eco Barons," because I think it adds to themes in all three of those books. It shows how our narratives of Africa involve the idea of the helpless natives and the savior/adventurer/philanthropist Westerners, even though the narratives that Africans have would tell exactly the opposite story, of an Africa continually plundered by Westerners, first the colonialists and now the NGOs/nonprofits/tourism people. I was glad to see her perspective on the Gorongosa Park, even though it can be depressing to look at how peoples' good intentions fail. Her stories of other failed conservation ventures were illuminating as to the complexity of the problems and the hubris people end up having when they try to 'solve' them.
She puts this book together with the idea that we all have our own narratives about what is going on in the world, but if we don't seek out the narratives of those we are interacting with, our picture will look very different from theirs. Whens he interviews the Mozambicans who live near the park, they have a very different perspective from those foreigners who work for the park, yet the founder of the park refuses to acknowledge any other narratives and that is why the project has the sort of troubles it has.
I'd also like to point out that all of these people involved with the park and putting forth that the park is the best thing to ever happen to the area are benefiting tremendously from their own narrative, whether it be financially or in terms of reputation. USAID markets itself as an aid organization but in reality it does nothing without some kind of return, usually promoting American business interests. There are strings attached. E.O. Wilson, as she points out, has various projects which benefit from their connection to the Gorongosa Park. She did not paint any of the characters as being evil, or anything, yet she does point out that their methods might be harming more than they are helping - this may come across as harsh to some people but I think she was actually quite generous in assuming these people really did have the ecosystem's best interests in mind. I'm not sure they do.
The book doesn't say this explicitly, but one of the underlying problems of any conservation effort is capitalism's inherent disregard for nature and people, and the inequality produced by greater capitalistic economic growth. An economic system that views everything as a commodity is not going to be able to make a national park that is both profitable and beneficial to those people and animals living in and around it. Try as we may, capitalist enterprises do not mesh with conservation, and any time it seems like it works out, you can take a closer look and see the exact opposite.

[Siyu · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm surrounded by quite a bit of the savior mentality and the "white hunter, black poacher" or "white conservationist, black poacher" dynamic, which has always made me, an anti-colonialist through and through, extremely uncomfortable. This was an insightful read, filling in the other perspectives missing from mainstream do-gooder PR articles on conservation in Africa.

This was a good follow-up read to Noah's Choice: The Future of Endangered Species, which focused on biodiversity conservation in the US and challenges there. Both were extremely enjoyable reads.

To me, Hanes is not being pessimistic or cynical: we have to be honest, first and foremost, in order to make progress efficiently, which is so important because we don't have time to lose.

[Chris Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a fantastic exploration of the complex topics of aid, environmentalism, conservation, politics, history, and philosophy. Linking together different stories and ways of seeing the same sets of events, the author brings the reader on a journey through both the history of conversation in southern Africa and the specific example of Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique. As the park is redeveloped, even the very best minds in conservation and development seem to fall pray to the same kinds of misunderstandings and complications that plague many of the expensive, high-profile projects like this one. More importantly, the author links the surprises and failures of many conservation efforts to the stories and logic systems employed by their western patrons; logic systems at odds with the way many people in local communities see the world. These fundamental misunderstandings are revealing not only in the context of aid and environmental work, but also bear lessons for us in the political experience of our recent US presidential election.

I highly recommend this book for anyone working in aid, conservation, international relations, government, politics, history, or environmental philosophy.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ms. Hanes has written a thought provoking book on ill-conceived efforts to reconstruct an African national park and initiate a plan to save the animal populations. In my opinion, this is an excellent, well balanced account of a situation where, once again, well meaning wealthy white people descend on an African community ‘knowing’ what needs to be done to save the people, their surrounding landscape, and the animals that try to live there. When are we going to learn that we do not have all the answers. The time has come to become better listeners. Hanes has researched her book beautifully, is a brilliant storyteller, and presents all sides of the arguments with compassion and integrity. The book is a page-turner! One can only hope for a happier ending, if not now, maybe in the future, as thoughtful readers consider the lessons learned from reading this book.

[Anshuman Swain · Rating 4 out of 5]

A complex, holistic and well-rounded account of foreign funded 'big conservation' efforts in parts of Africa, and in specific, the book tells the story of Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique. The author goes into details of how even if the interests of conservationists and local populace align, the work of the former often ignore the latter's opinions and interests. The western gaze of conservation in general and in specific in Africa, often ignores the needs of people who have lived on the lands - making their wider efforts unfruitful in longer run.

[Ken Goldman · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this intelligently written and well researched book, Ms. Hanes interweaves her personal experiences as a reporter in Southern Africa with the historical background on the ares she discusses. She describes the book as a Safari, a three part journey, the preparation beforehand, the journey, and the memories the traveler takes with them. This is a formula that works well. The backstories and historical perspectives, in of themselves, make for compelling stories, but tying this perspective to her modern observances, and follow up research, round out and complete the picture. The bottom line in these stories is that things are not always what they seem, and Ms Hanes clearly explains why that is so. While this book primarily addresses Western conservation and development efforts in Africa, there are lessons here that extend far beyond those areas. White Man's Game gives you a lot to think about and take with you.

[Stuart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book. Great writing style, fascinating story, excellent historical research and context-setting. Made me think, challenged me, opened my eyes to a part of the world about which I know painfully little. The story that Ms. Hanes tells is important not only for what we are doing in, for and to Africa, but how we -- as a society -- have approached so many situations in which we feel "we know the answers better than anyone else," especially better than the people whose lives are directly affected each day by our (usually) good intentions. I highly recommend this book, and I look forward to reading it again.

[Darya · Rating 4 out of 5]

I grabbed this book from the shelves dedicated to animals and nature in my local library. Which is okay, they had to put it somewhere, after all. And the focal point is a nature conservation project. But this classification is also misleading - because to a much greater extent than about animals, this book is about narratives. The stories we people tell ourselves in order to explain the world in general and define the trajectory of our own actions.

Stylistically, it is a brilliantly written page-turner. A compelling, thought-provoking book that made me angry at it more than on one occasion.

While the wider context of the Western narratives around "saving Africa" is invoked and deconstructed, the focus is on the Gorongosa national park in Mozambique. It was a splendid natural reserve back in colonial times, devastated during the civil war that followed Mozambique's independence. An American philanthropist chooses the place as the starting point for the application of his efforts and resources (his own and USAID's) in an endeavor to bring the park back to its old glory, attract ecotourism, and raise the locals from poverty.

Hanes shows how such stencil narratives can be at odds with the locals' experience of the same processes. Starting from the fact that for them, obviously, the colonial authorities' restrictions on the indigenous people's use of resources on certain territories so that privileged white safari-goers could use the same resources are not at all "the days of old glory." (The "white hunter"\"black poacher" binary.) Back in the contemporary timeframe, many of the people living in the park's vicinity got to rely on poaching whatever animals still remained for living. So the renewed restriction on land use and heightened control by rangers in the process of the park restoration actually worsened their economic standing before there could be any improvement because of the anticipated "trickle-down" effect. Then, stories about spirits ruling over everything are as evidence-based for the Mozambiquans as the paradigm of economic transformation is for the Westerners. (The chapter I found the least persuading). Which is why they tend to see the conservationists as intruders and hesitate to "buy" the story that "can't you see, we are here to help, wait for it, we are helping, helping, helping..."

There are several layers to this. If this all were about a project that was supposed to help humans in the first place, I would say, yes, totally, go for the opinion of the people whom the project is supposed to help and don't bother. But there's another element in this system, which is nature and the animals themselves. To me, they have their own inherent value, so I totally agree that it makes sense to protect wildlife from subsistence poachers with fourteen children. I appreciated it when Hanes finally mentioned after 160+ pages, in a different context, that the main problem with nature conservation is that there are too many humans on Earth. Lest this argument goes in the wrong direction ("too many of those primitive indigenous humans spoiling the virgin Eden for us privileged enough to deserve enjoying it"), I want to emphasize: too many of any humans, of any race.

Unfortunately, animals as a value in and of their own are absent from significant portions of the book. We are only dealing with two clashing narratives: 1) "we are here to save nature from those evil-meaning locals"; 2) "those evil intruders are imposing unfair rules on our nature use, disturbing our spirits." And between these two narratives, I am eager to go with the first one. I have seen the same dynamics in so many other contexts that deal with modernization, most of them having absolutely nothing to do with race. I guess this means I am biased and believe in rational modernity too much. This is where I was often angry at the book: "so what are you offering instead?", I would ask it. This is also probably the problem with the genre expectations. Contemporary American non-fiction books are usually so clear in stating what they are offering instead. And repeating this over and over, ad nauseam. Hanes's book was not clear in what is suggested instead. Just "paying attention to those other stories"?

So I found much more effective those portions of the book where animals do appear and where the conservationists' actions are checked against their own aims, on the terms and criteria set by the discourse of nature conservation itself. For instance, there were almost no big animals left in Gorongosa, and they had to be imported from elsewhere. That nearest elsewhere was Kruger national park in South Africa, which was able to give several elephants even for free. There are already too many elephants in Kruger, you see. During the apartheid era, park managers would kill some of the elephants from a helicopter, leaving surviving relatives deeply traumatized. (Yes, elephants are that intelligent and sentient.) In the contemporary timeframe, the park management is considering starting to do that again because there are just too many for the ecosystem to support. That is, the same action that is severely penalized in nearby Swaziland is here performed for the sake of nature conservation. (Hanes did not make the comparison but she put both controversies out, so I think this is where she wanted to lead the reader.) Here is where the conservation discourse is starting to crumble, not where it is at odds with the spirits discourse. Now, if the animals are imported to Gorongosa, is it about "saving the pristine Eden" or about manipulating the ecosystem in a way so that it makes a better touristy attraction? There are simply too many humans everywhere, there are no ecosystems left that haven't been man-changed. (She mentions this line of thought, so I wrote down some further reading in this direction.)

4 stars for the thought-provoking potential and the style, not that I loved so much everything written in the book.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely fabulous book, should be required reading for all conservationists, wildlife photographers, safari buffs or just anyone who values the importance of analyzing a situation using all available narratives instead of the one that suits us. Whether you agree with her analysis of the Gorongosa Park project is irrelevant. The problem with Africa is not Africans and Stephanie Hanes does an incredible job of pointing out why the “white people save africa” narrative isn’t true for all.

[Edward Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A probing, insightful examination of the complexities, dark dimensions, and dangerous paternalism of Western conservation and humanitarian efforts in Africa.

[DW · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. This book was not what I expected, especially because I thought it was about MeToo before I read the subtitle. Actually, it was about how all the "good things" we can try to do in Africa can be way off base. Not exactly a new story, but I had never before seen a book that balanced and gave credence to both the white and African sides of the story. How an organization can cite true statistics that show "objectively" that things are "improving," and yet at the same time conditions are somehow getting worse (she points out the focus on inputs ("we held seminars") vs outputs ("the people understand what we're doing"). I had also never heard a Westerner seriously propose "angry spirits" to explain why things hadn't worked out. And yet, as she points out, it is a self-consistent narrative. I thought the book was very well-written. The ominous foreshadowing was effective, and the verbs were active without being distracting.

I have to say, it gave me pause to read this book directly after reading Factfulness. Factfulness ... Written by a white man who did charity work in Africa, and was insisting, via statistics, that things there were getting better. Who was rebuked by an African that they were not happy simply to be in "ordinary poverty" instead of "extreme poverty". I'm wondering if Hanes would have similar criticisms of Rosling. And yet, Risking, as a physician, actually workebd directly with Africans, so maybe not?

Quotes I liked:
"The West spent $2.3 trillion on foreign aid over the second half of the twentieth century, ((William Easterly)) pointed out, yet impoverished children still can't get twelve-cent medicines that would prevent half of all malaria deaths. He contrasted this with the West's ability, in the same month as the Live8 concerts, to deliver nine million copies of the latest Harry Potter novel to its fans in a single day." p54

"When something goes haywire, we put the blame not on that underlying narrative but on the characters within it. We don't stop to consider whether there is a problem with the basic plot line itself - with the motion that rich people from the United States can, and should, drop into parts of the world vastly different from their own in order to dramatically reshape environments and societies." p70

"In Gorongosa, the ancestors are actually here, now, in a not-quite-parallel world that regularly touches our own. ((...That)) is not 'traditional,' or 'unmodernized,' or any of the terms thrown about in development lingo to describe the world's poor. It is ((Eugenio's)) current, twenty-first-century life." p122

((...)) An American audience. (An audience, as all of us who write for public consumption know, that does not take particularly well to complication, doom and gloom, or suggestions of culpability.)" p205 Ouch.

"Somehow, despite the breathtaking variety of the world's cultures, languages, histories, and norms, and despite our modern-day assurances that we truly care about 'local input,' we perpetually emerge from our encounters with other people with our old comfortable beliefs safely intact." p210

"For Westerners, science is objective. It is so objective, indeed, that we believe you can be ignorant of a particular place, it's culture, and its history, and still be the most expert person around [...] In other words, we do not believe that biology itself changes just because one is sitting in Gorongosa rather than in Concord, Massachusetts. [...]
"But although science presents itself as unassailable truth, equations solved and theories proven, in fact it regularly turns out to be wrong. Think about everything from bloodletting, whichdoctors swore by for some two thousand years (mistake!), to the new understanding of the malleability of genetics [...].
"There are many big shifts like this in scientific truth. But there are other subtler ways in which science can be unreliable. [...] The human subconscious affects the results." p226

"The issue, I'd argue, comes when the later type of storytelling, the exception-to-the-rule tale that's told for the sake of a good story, blends with the former, the representative story that attempts on some level to show how something is.

[Larissa Distler · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found out about Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique in an ecology course I was taking for fun and have since been diving headfirst down this fascinating rabbit hole.

A little background: Mozambique overthrew their Portuguese colonizers then descended into a thirty year civil war. Previously to the war Gorongosa National Park was the "jewel of Africa." An absolutely gorgeous swath of land with elephants, lions, zebra, hippos, etc etc . . .plus fabulously varied geology including beautiful Lake Urema and it's flood plain, savannah as far as the eye could see, and the mulit-peaked Mount Gorongosa complete with isolated rain forest ecosystem.

After the war when western aid workers and scientists descended on the nation, what they found was quite startling. They have a saying in Mozambique "When elephants fight, the grass gets trampled." Did it ever. It was a terrible war. The infrastructure crumbled. Roads were inaccessible. 95% of the population was illiterate. And the park was decimated. The park was a military base for both sides of the conflict and soldiers have to eat. The heard of 30,000 zebra because a handful of animals. The few elephants remaining were tuskless a rare condition, but their tusked compatriots were hunted for their ivory. The parks predators were almost non-existent.

So in swoops American philanthropist Greg Carr. He was searching for a way to spend his money that would have the most impact. When he found Gorongosa, he knew this was the place. His idea was that by saving the beauty of the park, he would in turn save the people. He would create jobs, build schools and science labs, clean wells, and fix the roads. So he spoke with the newly formed capitalist government and they said, go for it!

Now the story of Gorongosa is fascinating and inspirational, don't get me wrong. Many Mozambicans have gotten jobs in the park and an education from there. Many poachers are now rangers. There are now 93 schools in the communities around the park. Animals have been re-introduced and some of them are doing great. Others are having some troubles (particularly predators), but the scientists are working on it. And Gorongosa has quite the impressive array of scientists on the ground. There are some very poignant success stories that are important and worth knowing.

However, journalist Stephanie Hanes saw a somewhat different story when she was reporting on location from Gorongosa. She heard of angry spirits and demoralized locals who are rightfully suspicious of foreigners trying to help. She argues that the west is very rightfully concerned about the well being of Africa and it's ecology, however, let's not forget about the Africans, their culture, and traditions.

[Jared Hocking · Rating 3 out of 5]

While Stephanie Hanes has a unique and well-crafted viewpoint to share, questioning well-intentioned projects in Africa, and rightly identifies a certain degree of hubris and lack of perspective by these project visionaries, ultimately her analysis is far too cynical, wrapped up in qualms about identity including cringe-worthy statements about innocuous interactions between white and black individuals (such as the E.O Wilson and Tang Tang? or Chris Matthews example).

It seems clear, contrary to Ms. Hanes' statements, that preeminent biologists, even if they happen to be white or Western, such as E.O Wilson, do offer more credible expertise than African inhabitants on questions of biodiversity. Just being local to a place or utilizing the land does not make one an expert on biodiversity. Further, it is clear that just because the Gorangosa National Park did not "meet its development goals" of lifting all 150,000 surrounding people out of poverty, indeed much of the turmoil in that area is created by people endemic to it, not the Westerners that are seeking to preserve biodiversity.

But the ultimate question is - would there be a Gorangosa National Park without affluent Westerners of others? Or would poaching continue unabated, as well as ecological catastrophe? Given that so many in Africans either engage in poaching or harvest bushmeat, it seems unquestionable unless there is someone with the resources to build tourism lodges and turn the area into a national park, this will continue. Could that have come from local Africans? Possibly, but given the poverty, it seems unlikely they could help in the way Greg and the Carr Foundation did.

and what about the snapping? If it is a reality that a child dies in Africa every three seconds, should the Western world stop intervening, stop caring? Just leave African people and their people to figure it out themselves? Or is it more likely that millions of people attending benefit concerts, thousands of doctors and nurses administering HIV care and the Red Cross engaging in heroic work, even if they travel in Land Rovers are saving millions of lives?

Ms. Hanes suggesting our existing narratives are broken and not helpful. So is the narrative Africans are telling to ignore them completely and stop trying to help? I don't think so. I think that would make many people and animals a lot worse off.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's serious journalism, and deserves your time to read it. I recommend it. The core narrative is that there are multiple narratives within any conservation issue, and Hanes gives a decent exposition of what these are in the views surrounding the formation of the Gorongosa National Park and the treatment of often marginalised people who have lived in the surrounding area for generations. But there are two big disappointments. Firstly, despite showing great awareness of the importance of competing narratives, Hanes provides the reader with very few first-hand accounts of what these narratives are. She appears to have spent great chunks of time in Gorongosa, but no detailed conversations or interviews with any local people result; just fragments, or theories put forward by anthropologists with variable claims on expertise in the region. Secondly, she regularly boils the complex and competing narratives down into a single narrative called, often, Western. Consider this line: "For Westerners, science is objective. It is so objective, indeed, that we believe you can be ignorant of a particular place, its culture and its history, and still be the most expert person around, as long as you are schooled in a particular scientific field... We view science the way we describe our gods." Really? I don't. Few of my scientist friends do. Rather, they see science as a discipline with which to approach the study of a phenomenon. Hanes seems fairly keen to convince the reader of a degree of homogeneity in "the West's" narrative that simply is not there.

[Meghan Bohn · Rating 4 out of 5]

'...most of us could be excused for concluding that the key to African nature preservation is just to love animals, give them refuge, and keep the baddies from killing them. It's a straightforward story, reinforced by generations of explorers and scientists, writers and politicians. It's good versus bad, simple and understandable, the way we think about many things in the developing world. But as I would soon find out, it's also pretty much completely wrong.'

Back in 2019, officials in Botswana were considering culling elephants and using the meat for pet food. I read the comments (I know) on a news article from the BBC (I think) and the disconnect was staggering. (White) Americans and Europeans were threatening to never visit the country again, while the local people were pointing out that these Very Large animals were eating up their livelihood and killing their families. I am so incredibly grateful that my grad school program placed such an emphasis on community-based conservation.

It took me over a year to read this book, and it's through no fault of the writing. It was simply the fact that it ended up as my bedtime reading material and while it is incredibly well-written and informative and thought provoking, it's very often tragic and not what I was looking for right before bed. I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in conservation, regardless of their level of prior knowledge.

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely vital contribution to conservation literature, White Man’s Game acknowledges the good work that is being done in and around Gorongosa National Park, and the good intentions of the many people involved in the restoration project, without pulling any punches about just how complicated the situation is and how many things have, if not gone completely wrong, then certainly not gone right.

Stephanie Hanes’ book is an important insight into a huge and extremely well-publicised (not to mention well-funded) conservation undertaking, but it also asks questions that have important repercussions for conservation projects far beyond Mozambique. Over the centuries, human rights and conservation have often been at odds and, if we aren’t careful, we run the risk of repeating the same mistakes, albeit couched in new modern language. This book is an important first step in changing the narrative and, although it doesn’t necessarily offer any specific answers to an extremely complicated set of questions, it is the perfect way to start an important conversation.

[Kitty Galore · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book wasn't as descriptive of animal extermination as I thought it might be which is actually a good thing. I know what is going on in African parks and don't need to be constantly reminded of it. Instead the book focused on the political machinations of African nature park and local administrators and the damage at what THAT is doing to the various human and non-human animals living within and outside the confines of the park, in this case Gorongosa. I'm not sure the case can be made that all these parks are mismanaged, but she made a case for this one. It seems to imply that people should reassess the monetary contributions in supporting these efforts, but perhaps that local people should be more involved in the process. Based on her assessment, however, I will not stop contributing to these causes.

[Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly researched and compellingly written, this book examines competing narratives about conservation which surround and shape Gorongosa National Park in central Mozambique. It is the habit of Western society to take inherently complex pursuits like conservation (anywhere, but in Africa in particular in this text) and reduce them to simplified narratives which are more easily digestible by consumers and financial benefactors. This book explores what a mistake this can be, as inevitably there are other intertwined, non-linear narrative arcs that, if ignored, can completely impede the success of a project. Hanes uses Gorongosa as a lens to analyze narrative storytelling and narrative storytelling as a lens to analyze Gorongosa. The result is a portrayal of African conservation that may be hard to stomach but is difficult to refute given Hanes' persuasive writing.

[Cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another sad story. First Whites go in and coop the continent, then they upset the natural order of things, then they come back to try and fix it to make it more amenable for the tourist trade (of game hunters depending on the country), still detrimental to the natives that No one is consulting, or even caring about. We go in to "save " all sorts of things, animals, rain forests, etc..., but never, ever people. South America has similar issues. We go in show the tribes what we have, but now HOW to get it. You know, stay primitive little tribal people, your good for the tourists. It never ends. Great read for learning more about the wider world and it's politics and policies.
I received a Kindle ARC in exchange for a fair review from Netgalley.

[John Benson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book on conservation projects in southern Africa, and centered on the work by Greg Carr with Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique, to be especially good. It questions the amount of money sent by Western individuals and governments to save wildlife areas while neglecting to listen to the voices of the locals living around the parks. Hanes has written a nuanced and balanced book, that does not fit with the conventional "National Geographic" narrative of Africa. It calls for a much wider human view that most Americans (maybe Europeans?) are unwilling to give about African conservation efforts.

[Steve Peifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I had been in Kenya several years, a Kenyan friend finally told me why he hated white people: 'You care more for our animals than our people.' In a nutshell, that is one of the messages in this extraordinary book. Environmental conservation can dwarf people needs. Moreover, this is a story of how very well intentioned people can be tone deaf, culturally insensitive and never bother to ask the members of the community in which they want to serve what their opinions are. This is white privilege in its most oblivious form. It's a must read.

[Joel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A damning account of expat-led conservation in Africa, using the example of Gorongosa NP in Mozambique. Expats frequently bring many resources and good intentions, but that alone rarely results in success. The author details why... understanding the deep connections that people have with their land, with their past, and in the way they see the world is imperative to designing and implementing successful conservation (or behavior-change) projects. A must-read for anyone interested in wildlife conservation (in Africa, particularly).

[Maggie H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow and yikes and powerful and depressing. A must-read for any conservationist, and particularly painful to read whilst in Mozambique. I wish that Hanes had offered some suggestion as to what specific course of action her long term research would suggest as beneficial, but the entire point is that there is no one clear answer and everything is muddled. Honestly it left me feeling a bit hopeless, which may not be the most useful feeling, but it also left me feeling educated and informed and more holistically aware.

[Puck · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a gorgeous book. Stephanie Hanes weaves the various threads of the interlocking stories masterfully and keeps coming back to the point that those of us in the Global North who want to help the "developing world" cannot do it while stuck in our own narrative and unable to hear/learn from others' stories. Because the stories of those who live in the areas where conservationists work are no less real and true and incomplete than our own.

[Marcia · Rating 5 out of 5]

A highly readable and interesting account of the western impact on conservation in Africa. Focusing on the Gorongosa refuge, the author weaves together stories that highlight the challenges faced by the locals. She takes on LiveAid, elephant relocation, shark cage diving, and some convincing spiritual intervention in the mountains near the park. And Cecil the lion.Very interesting, and Hanes has a terrific, informal journalistic style that I enjoyed.

[Joana Trindade · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. As a Mozambican myself, I found the historical background quite interesting, and as a conservationist, it resounded with a lot of my beliefs regarding western models of conservation. Conservation for conservation sake has been shown to fail over and over. When the people most intimately connected to land and wildlife are not part of the solution (and are, instead, the so called receptors of it), conservationist is bound the fail.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very surface and somewhat disjointed... feels neither enough about this particular park she spent time as a journalist or about the problems with western conservation efforts in Africa (white people should just listen to local stories!). A lot of strange tangents on the history of organizations like Nat Geo that seemed pretty irrelevant.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps the greatest impact of any book I have ever read. It has opened my eyes how much we view things through a cultural lens and how we may not truly be listening to other stories and other ways of seeing things. If you are willing to have your Western, American/Euro-centric viewpoint called out and to recognize equally legitimate ways of perceiving things, then read White Man's Game.

[Gary Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thoughtful, provocative conversation about how we, as Americans, seek to control the narrative concerning conservation practices in Africa and presumably other places in the world. This book fundamentally changed my thinking. I highly recommend it.