Neither here nor there

A recent article on BBC News did a great job highlighting the struggle between wildlife and humans in nature conservation. Although we like to think that nature conservation is about preserving pristine lands, the truth is, many of the places we are trying to conserve involve hard choices between humans who are trying to live off that land, and flora and fauna that depend on minimal human impacts. This problem is augmented by the fact that our population is still exploding and we require more and more space. Further, there are serious North-South issues in play here, with prescriptions for conservation often coming from rich, well-developed countries who may seem to locals as more eager to spend money saving wildlife then they are in helping the people in these areas.

"We were in an illegal coffee plantation inside the Bukit Barisan Selatan (BBS) National Park in Sumatra, Indonesia. My WWF colleagues and Indonesian government partners had summoned me because villagers were threatening to kill the small "problem" herd." (full article on BBCNews.)

Unfortunately, there are no easy answers in this debate. One of the comments at the bottom of the article asserts that the situations like the one discussed here are just LOSE-LOSE situations. Ever the optimist, I think this may be true. But perhaps we just have to be more creative (and work more closely with local inhabitants, with respect and empathy at the center of our interactions) in the solutions we develop.