The conservation of wild lands is well documented and neatly archived in history. Eviction of indigenous people from their homeland in the wild for the sake of conservation is only found in collective memory and oral history. Through a hundred years, indigenous people have often been seen by conservationists as a problem, and the solution has always been eviction.

On a widely more publicized scale, the battle to protect nature and biodiversity has been between transnational conservationist organizations and their nemesis, those insatiable industries that deplete or destroy nature. There is, however, another conflict: transnational conservation vs. the worldwide movement of indigenous peoples.

‘Big conservation,’ a very strong global movement, is often seen as arrogant by the native people. Indigenous people have always regarded big conservation agencies as agents of imperialism.

The conflict has given rise to a distinct group called conservation refugees. These people are not officially recognized and counted as refugees even if ‘the number of people displaced from traditional homelands worldwide over the past century in the interest of conservation is estimated to be close to 20 million, 14 million of them in Africa alone.’

The resolution to the century-old conflict in the wild is not about to be apparent to its stakeholders. The result is lamentable: thousands of protected land in the most biologically rich areas of the world cannot be managed.

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Via guardian.co.uk/Native Solutions to Conservation Refugees