Sunday, March 1, 2009

Neumann: Political Ecology in Tanzania - Wilcox

The main focus of this article was how the political ecology of Tanzania is disrupting the preservation of wildlife. Political ecology has to deal with how "land user's behavior is influenced by social structures and processes that extend beyond his or her immediate environment", particularly in a Third World setting. The reason the parks are in such a threat is because the idea of natural areas is not very popular with the surrounding residents. The fact that the residents surrounding the parks don't comply with park regulations, wildlife is taking the consequences from poaching. The battle has become one of encroachment vs. wildlife.
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National Parks are not very popular in Tanzania for many reasons and the first one is how they were established. These parks were brought up when this country was under British rule after WWI. These areas were drawn up on maps thousands of miles away with no concern for the locals; citizens were living life peacefully one day and the next they were told to leave because this area is now "protected". This was first noticed in the Serengeti National Park, established in 1940, where the Masai people were they had to change their life because of the new park boundaries. They could now not graze their cattle on land they have been doing it for many generations; "national parks severly disrupted historical patterns of land use". The second case of local populations of people disliking the thought of national parks was in the Mt. Meru area. The Arusha National Park was established in 1960 and was very unliked because the new park rules made it hard or impossible to continue their way of life. They now had to graze cattle in very distinct areas, had to reduce taking coffee as cash crop, and had to have various restrictions on honey production becasue of the danger of fire. Citizens are not the only ones having to deal with the new problems.

Wildlife such as the elephant and black rhino were being poached at an alarming rate, which still is true today. Since the introduction of the parks people had to change their ways of life because farming was just not an option anymore. The ivory from the elephant and the rhino tusk are worth a lot of money, so the native residents took advantage of the resources. These two species have became near extinct in the park and the black rhino is almost extinct all together. Wildlife officials are very aggravated over the situation because they are getting no help from the locals about poachers. The wildlife officials are not concerned about the citizens as much as they are the wildlife because "those of man ... are of second importance".

To sum up the article I would have to say it is an argument of encroachment vs. wildlife. There is a great deal of population growth, particularly in the Third World, and people are just needing more space to live; animals are always going to get the short end of the stick, particularly when the people they live around do not care about them as much as others. There is just no way growing populations/encroachment can co-exist with conserving nature because the needs of the people will met if the law allows it or not.

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