Fortress Conservation in East Africa

Do cattle destroy a wilderness? Does a wilderness need to be devoid of people in order to be “saved”? In this hard-hitting book, Dan Brockington argues that the dominant approach to wildlife conservation in Africa has more to do with Western views of the environment than with what is appropriate for African people and herds. He focuses on the Tanzanian government’s decision to evict people and cattle from the Mkomazi Game Reserve in 1988, but he also considers damaging, harmful, and unjust conservation efforts across the continent. Extensive fieldwork and archival investigations enable the author to elucidate the history of the Mkomazi reserve, assess competing explanations of the environmental dynamics of the reserve, and show the negative effects of exclusion on local populations and the regional economy.