How American Environmentalism’s Racist Roots Shaped Our Thoughts on Conservation

The United States is having a long-overdue national reckoning with racism. From criminal justice to pro sports to pop culture, Americans increasingly are recognising how racist ideas have influenced virtually every sphere of life in this country.

Themes: Conservation, Indigenous people, Parks

Mapping conflict hotspots as leopards adapt to unlikely habitats outside protected areas

Analysis of leopard attacks on livestock offers clues to potential human-leopard conflict hotspots in North Bengal in eastern Himalayas and Pauri Garhwal in western Himalayas.

Themes: Conservation, Parks, Agriculture

Leopards have adapted to using human-modified landscapes such as tea gardens, sugarcane fields and farmlands and they can survive in unusual, multi-use, fragmented vegetation patches outside protected areas. The study finds the risk of a leopard killing livestock increased within a heterogeneous landscape matrix consisting of both closed and open habitats (very dense forests, moderate dense forests, open forests, scrubland and non-forests).

CECIL Act threatens successful wildlife conservation efforts in African countries

Themes: Conservation, Indigenous people, Human rights, Hunting, Poverty, Parks

The CECIL Act, name after the lion killed by a hunter in 2015, would prohibit American hunters from importing animals harvested through legal, regulated means.

WWF Says It Is “Troubled” By An Alleged Human Rights Violation At A Park With A History Of Violence

“Conservation should never come at the expense of human rights and well-being.”

Themes: Conservation, NGOs, Human rights, Parks

After guards at a wildlife park funded by the World Wide Fund for Nature were accused of killing a 24-year-old Nepali man earlier this month, the leading conservation charity said it will "advocate for diligence" in the investigation.

Sri Lanka: Rich in biodiversity, and human-wildlife conflict

Themes: Conservation, Poverty, Poaching

- Human-wildlife encounters have increased rapidly in recent years and go beyond elephants and leopards. Competition has grown over the shared space between humans and wildlife due to encroachment, deforestation, habitat degradation, and climate change, putting humans and animals in conflict over land, water and resources. Humans often clash with macaques and langurs as the monkeys are attracted by garbage, are being fed or try to find new habitats due to deforestation. Peafowl are emerging as top agricultural pests due to their expanding range and distribution over the last decade. - Crocodile attacks mainly affect poorer communities that are dependent on unsafe bodies of water, and they often lack awareness of the animals’ behavior. - There is an urgent need to increase awareness around human-wildlife conflict and crop foraging as well as to employ non-violent mitigation measures that take into account the interests of both humans and animals, including fences, garbage management and habitat conservation.

View from the Termite Mound

Themes: Human rights, Indigenous people, Parks, Pastoralists, Conservation

Scattered, Scarce, and Delayed Reports While Waiting for Action against the Genocidal MLUM Proposal in Ngorongoro

The Achilles Heel of Conservation -

Conservation is not yet inclusive, considerate and attuned to the black African experience

Themes: Conservation

Conservation globally is a challenging battle. Movements against climate change, plastic pollution and deforestation in the Amazon are on the rise. So to are ground-breaking research and futuristic interventions, and yet the natural world is burning. Nowhere else is this more evident and an uphill battle than in Africa and this is why.

Dossier: hunting and human-wildlife conflict.

Hunting is a topic that attracts polarised viewpoints. But as Mark Rowe demonstrates, when it comes to limiting human-wildlife conflict and to wider conservation measures, it’s not always so simple.

Themes: Conservation, Pastoralists, Poaching, Parks, Indigenous people, NGOs, Hunting

Mention ‘hunting’ and most of us think of poaching – primarily for ivory and the demands of Chinese medicine – or trophy hunting (see maps below); and the unpalatable image of a triumphant (usually) white Westerner straddling a dead, charismatic mammal. But the issue is a much wider and more nuanced one.