Losing the Serengeti:

The Maasai Land that was to Run Forever

Themes: Conservation, Parks, Tourism, Indigenous people

Based on field research, never publicly-seen-before documents, and an in-depth investigation into Tanzania’s land laws. This report is the first to reveal the complicity between Tanzanian government officials and foreign companies as they use conservation laws to dispossess the Maasai, driving them into smaller and smaller areas and creating a stifling map of confinement.

Escape from Protection: The Catastrophe of Conservation in Panama.

Typified by The Nature Conservancy and The World Wildlife Fund, Global Conservation as such is really an arm of colonialist foreign policy going back at least a century, and its fundamental aims have not changed.

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

Cloaked under a veneer of idealism, protected area conservation is a cynical and ubiquitous foreign policy charade, harming both the environment and its inhabitants throughout the world. Indigenous residents are displaced either as a matter of policy by force or through ecosystem degradation, depending on the protected area category set by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Swiss-based body for conservation, founded in 1947 as a lesser-known leg in the postwar international system.

Fenced out of nature.

Outside Kruger National Park, the people who once lived inside may be the key to the reserve’s future.

Themes: Conservation, Human rights, Parks, Poverty

Kruger National Park and the communities around its borders represent the global front line in the battle against rhino poaching. South Africa contains the largest remaining rhino populations in the world, and most of the killing is happening in and around Kruger. In these villages, residents are caught in the middle of an escalating fight between poachers and conservationists — one that has grown in intensity and violence as prices skyrocket. Poor and dispossessed, these villages potentially hold the key to solving this crisis in the long run, and yet distrust runs deep.

Illegal evictions of Baiga indigenous people from India’s Kanha National Park.

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

In March 2017, India’s National Tiger Conservation Authority issued a notice asking 17 states to suspend the rights of indigenous peoples and other forest dwellers in critical tiger habitats.

India: Almost 40,000 people were evicted in the name of conservation in 2017.

In 2017, government authorities in India destroyed almost 8,000 homes and forcefully evicted nearly 40,000 people, in the name of conservation. That’s more than 20 homes destroyed and 109 people evicted every day.

Themes: Conservation, Human rights

The Corrupting of Conservation

Rhinos Wanted – Dead or Alive

Themes: Conservation

Major gaps between South African and Namibian legislation that regulates the endangered species trade allowed for the sale of at least 13 white rhino bulls from a South African game park to a Russian big game hunting outfit in Namibia. Nine of these rhinos were found to have died.

Threats of eviction against indigenous Sengwer people continue in Kenya.

In an Urgent Action Alert, Amnesty International is asking people to write to the director of the Kenya Forest Service.

Themes: Conservation, Human rights, Indigenous people

India's National Tiger Conservation Authority rides roughshod over the Forest Rights Act.

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

An order passed by the National Tiger Conservation Authority on March 27, 2017 categorically states that the Forest Rights Act (FRA) will not apply in Tiger Reserves. By doing this, the order not only invalidates the rights of communities who live within Tiger Reserves, but also confuses the provisions of the two laws: the Forest Rights Act and the Wildlife Protection Act.