Fortress conservation is a conservation model based on the belief that biodiversity protection is best achieved by creating protected areas where ecosystems can function in isolation from human disturbance. [1] Its implementation has been criticized for human rights abuses against indigenous inhabitants when creating and maintaining protected areas. [2]
It is argued that money generated from ecotourism is the motivating factor to drive indigenous inhabitants off the land. [3] [4]
Conservation charities, the biggest of which is the World Wildlife Fund, have increasingly militarized the campaign against poaching. Such poaching is often by organized criminal gangs that prey on the endangered species and, in 2018, 50 park rangers were killed globally. Veterans from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been recruited to teach forest rangers counterinsurgency techniques and ex–special forces operatives promote their services at wildlife conferences. This has often involved recruiting paramilitary groups who are then supplied with military grade weaponry. [5]
Some conservation groups argue for the fortress conservation model with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, an outcome of the 2022 United Nations Biodiversity Conference, arguing for the 30 by 30 initiative to designate 30% of Earth's land and ocean area as protected areas by 2030. [6] While the fortress conservation model views human as being inherently destructive to the environment, some have argued that the most efficient conservation methods involve transferring rights over land from public domain to its indigenous inhabitants, who have had a stake for millennia in preserving the forests that they depend on. [7] This includes the protection of such rights entitled in existing laws, such as the Forest Rights Act in India, where concessions to land continue to go mostly to powerful companies. [7] The transferring of such rights in China, perhaps the largest land reform in modern times, has been argued to have increased forest cover. [2] [8] Granting title of the land has shown to have two or three times less clearing than even state run parks, notably in the Brazilian Amazon. Even while the largest cause of deforestation in the world's second largest rainforest in the Congo is smallholder agriculture and charcoal production, areas with community concessions have significantly less deforestation as communities are incentivized to manage the land sustainably, even reducing poverty. [9] Additionally, evicting inhabitants from protected areas often under the fortress conservation model often leads to more exploitation of the land as the native inhabitants then turn to work for extractive companies to survive. [2]
Up to 250,000 people worldwide have been forcibly evicted from their homes to make way for conservation projects since 1990, according to the UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples. [10] Another estimate put the total number of people displaced between 10.8 million and 173 million. [6]
In Botswana, many of the indigenous San people have been forcibly relocated from their land to reservations. To make them relocate, they were denied access to water on their land and faced arrest if they hunted, which was their primary source of food. [11] The government claims the relocation is to preserve the wildlife and ecosystem, even though the San people have lived sustainably on the land for millennia. [11] Additionally, their lands lie in the middle of the world's richest diamond field. On the reservations they struggle to find employment, and alcoholism is rampant. [11]
Baka people in Cameroon's Lobéké National Park have alleged abuse by park rangers funded by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). [5]
In national parks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, such as Kahuzi-Biéga National Park, heavily armed park rangers come into deadly conflict with the pygmy inhabitants who often cut the trees down to sell charcoal. [12] The conservation efforts of national parks in the country are often financed by international organizations such as the WWF and often involve removing native inhabitants off the land. [13]
The creation of Chitwan National Park in the 1970s led to tens of thousands of indigenous Tharu people to be evicted. The World Wildlife Fund has been accused of providing high-tech enforcement equipment, cash, and weapons to rangers involved torturing Tharu living near national parks such as Bardiya National Park. Nepalese law was changed to give forest rangers the power to investigate wildlife-related crimes, make arrests without a warrant, and retain immunity in cases where an officer had “no alternative” but to shoot the offender while the park's chief warden has the power to hand out 15-year prison terms by themselves. [5]
Forest rangers, known as ecoguards, dressed in paramilitary uniforms and heavily armed with funding from the WWF, are accused of torture, rape and murder of Baka pygmies in the proposed Messok Dja protected area as part of an effort to remove the Baka pygmies from the area. [10]
More than 150,000 Maasai people face eviction in Tanzania with moves to turn their lands into nature reserves for luxury safari tourism and for trophy hunting in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and in Loliondo near the Serengeti National Park. [14] Previous attempts to forcefully evict the Maasai have alleged to have included burning their homes. [3]
The preservation of Yosemite National Park under the advocacy of John Muir meant the expulsion of the Miwok and Paiute Native Americans. [15]
Protected areas or conservation areas are locations which receive protection because of their recognized natural, ecological or cultural values. Protected areas are those areas in which human presence or the exploitation of natural resources is limited.
In anthropology, pygmy peoples are ethnic groups whose average height is unusually short. The term pygmyism is used to describe the phenotype of endemic short stature for populations in which adult men are on average less than 150 cm tall.
Virunga National Park is a national park in the Albertine Rift Valley in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It was created in 1925. In elevation, it ranges from 680 m (2,230 ft) in the Semliki River valley to 5,109 m (16,762 ft) in the Rwenzori Mountains. From north to south it extends approximately 300 km (190 mi), largely along the international borders with Uganda and Rwanda in the east. It covers an area of 8,090 km2 (3,120 sq mi).
The Aka or Biaka are a nomadic Mbenga pygmy people. They live in south-western Central African Republic and in northern Republic of the Congo. They are related to the Baka people of Cameroon, Gabon, northern Congo, and southwestern Central African Republic.
The Baka people, known in the Congo as Bayaka, are an ethnic group inhabiting the southeastern rain forests of Cameroon, northern Republic of the Congo, northern Gabon, and southwestern Central African Republic. They are sometimes called a subgroup of the Twa, but the two peoples are not closely related. Likewise, the name "Baka" is sometimes mistakenly applied to other peoples of the area who, like the Baka and Twa, have been historically called pygmies, a term that is now considered derogatory.
The Bwindi Impenetrable National Park is a national park in southwestern Uganda. It is part of the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest and is situated along the Democratic Republic of the Congo border next to the Virunga National Park and on the edge of the Albertine Rift. Composed of 321 km2 (124 sq mi) of both montane and lowland forest, it is accessible only on foot. It is a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization-designated World Heritage Site.
Mkomazi National Park is located in northeastern Tanzania on the Kenyan border, in Same District of Kilimanjaro Region and Lushoto District, with a slither of the park in Mkinga District both of Tanga Region. It was established as a game reserve in 1951 and upgraded to a national park in 2006.
Size of Wales is a climate change charity founded with the aim of conserving an area of tropical rainforest the size of Wales. The project currently supports seven forest protection projects and one tree planting project across Africa and South America. The charity focuses upon furthering the promotion of rainforest conservation as a national response to the global issue of climate change.
Minkébé National Park is a national park in the extreme northeast of Gabon. It covers an area of 7,570 km2. The WWF recognized it as an area needing protection as early as 1989 and has been actively working towards protecting the forest since 1997. The park was established as a provisional reserve in 2000 but the Minkébé National Park itself was officially recognized and established by the Gabonese government in August 2002. It is recognized as a critical site for conservation by the IUCN and has been proposed as a World Heritage Site.
Boumba Bek National Park is a national park in extreme southeastern Cameroon, located in its East Province.
Nki National Park is a national park in southeastern Cameroon, located in its East Province. The closest towns to Nki are Yokadouma, Moloundou and Lomie, beyond which are rural lands. Due to its remoteness, Nki has been described as "the last true wilderness." It has a large and varied ecosystem, and it is home to over 265 species of birds, and the forests of Cameroon contain some of the highest population density of forest elephants of any nation with an elephant density of roughly 2.5 per square kilometer for Nki and neighboring Boumba Bek National Park combined. These animals are victims of poaching, which has been a major problem since an economic depression in the 1980s. The indigenous people follow in the footsteps of the poachers, attracted by the financial opportunities. The removal of logging industries from the park, on the other hand, has been a success; it is no longer considered a major threat to Nki's wilderness.
Conservation refugees are people who are displaced from their native lands when conservation areas, such as parks and other protected areas, are created.
Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park is a national park in the Republic of the Congo. Established in 1993, in the northern provinces of Congo, it is home to forest elephants, great apes, including western lowland gorillas and the eastern sub-species of chimpanzees and bongo. It is 3,921.61 km2 (1,514.14 sq mi) of pristine tropical rainforest with no human habitation within it and with human population densities in its periphery that are comparatively low for the sub-region. The forests have a rich biodiversity of 300 bird species, plus 1,000 plant and tree species which include endangered mahoganies.
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is a Swiss-based international non-governmental organization founded in 1961 that works in the field of wilderness preservation and the reduction of human impact on the environment. It was formerly named the World Wildlife Fund, which remains its official name in Canada and the United States. WWF is the world's largest conservation organization, with over five million supporters worldwide, working in more than 100 countries and supporting around 3,000 conservation and environmental projects. They have invested over $1 billion in more than 12,000 conservation initiatives since 1995. WWF is a foundation with 65% of funding from individuals and bequests, 17% from government sources and 8% from corporations in 2020.
Lobéké National Park is a national park of southeastern Cameroon within the Moloundou Arrondissement of East Province. Located in the Congo Basin, it is bounded on the east by the Sangha River which serves as Cameroon's international border with Central African Republic and the Republic of the Congo. It is adjacent to two other reserves in the CAR and Congo. To the northwest is Boumba Bek National Park, another national park in Cameroon's East Province.
The Dzanga-Sangha Special Reserve is a protected reserve of southwestern Central African Republic. It was established in 1990 and covers 6,865.54 km2 (2,650.80 sq mi). It is one of several areas within the Dzanga-Sangha Complex of Protected Areas (DSCPA), each within its own protective status and along with Lobéké National Park in Cameroon and Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in Republic of Congo, it is part of the Sangha Trinational Landscape. Other areas within the DSCPA include the Dzanga Ndoki National Park which has two sectors, the 495 km2 (191 sq mi) Dzanga park and the 725 km2 (280 sq mi) Ndoki park. A conference of the Ministers of Forests of Central African Forest Commission (COMIFAC) had resolved to establish within the Congo basin, the Sangha River Tri-national Protected area (STN) encompassing these three parks. The forest special reserve is operated by the Central African Forest Commission (COMIFAC).
The wildlife of the Central African Republic is in the vast natural habitat in the Central African Republic (CAR) located between the Congo Basin's rain forests and large savannas, where the human density was smaller than 0.5 per km2 prior to 1850. The forest area of 22.755 million, considered one of the richest storehouses of wildlife spread over national parks, hunting reserves and community hunting areas, experienced an alarming loss of wildlife because of greed for ivory and bushmeat exploitation by hunters – mostly Arab slavers from across the borders of the Central African Republic with Chad and Sudan.
The Twa are a group of indigenous Central African foragers tribes. These cultural groups were formerly called Pygmies by European writers, but the term is no longer preferred based on its cultural and geographic inaccuracy, as well as being seen as pejorative. Cultural groups are being reclassified by themselves based on their function in society, lineage, and land ties.
The Great Lakes Twa, also known as Batwa, Abatwa or Ge-Sera, are a Bantu speaking group native to the African Great Lakes region on the border of Central and East Africa. As an indigenous pygmy people, the Twa are generally assumed to be the oldest surviving population of the Great Lakes region. Current populations of Great Lakes Twa people live in the states of Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and the eastern portion of the Democratic Republic of Congo. In 2000 they numbered approximately 80,000 people, making them a significant minority group in these countries. The largest population of Twa is located in Burundi estimated in 2008 at 78,071 people.
The African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) is an international conservation organization created with the aim of preserving Africa's wildlife, wild lands, and natural resources.
