Synopses & Reviews
John Oates tackles one of the most serious challenges facing the world's conservation leaders today: How can the needs of wildlands and wildlife be reconciled with the needs of people? Current conservation theory holds that wildlife can best be protected through the promotion of human economic development. Oates disagrees. Drawing on his extensive experience as a primate ecologist who has worked on rainforest conservation projects in Africa and India, he argues that the linking of conservation to economic development has had disastrous consequences for many wildlife populations, especially in West Africa. He maintains that in those parts of the world where people are very poor, human well-being is more likely to be promoted by large-scale political, social, and economic reforms than by community development schemes associated with conservation projects.
Synopsis
In Myth and Reality in the Rain Forest, John Oates tackles one of the most serious challenges facing the world's conservation leaders today: How can the needs of wild-lands and wildlife be reconciled with the needs of people? Current conservation theory holds that wildlife can best be conserved through promoting human economic development. Oates disagrees. Drawing on more than thirty years' experience as a primate ecologist in West Africa and India, Oates argues that the linking of conservation to economic development has had disastrous consequences for many wildlife populations in the rain forest zone of West Africa.
Oates contends that conservation agencies must recognize that economic development is intrinsically incompatible with conservation goals. He urges that conservation planners return to the principle on which many conservation organizations were founded: that nature is worthy of protection for its intrinsic value, as a precious heritage for all of us.
Synopsis
Running counter to prevailing views that conservation must be tied to development, Oates writes from the philosophical or ethical position that nature should be preserved for its own sake and not because of its economic usefulness to human beings. An important and controversial contribution to a major conservation issue.
Synopsis
"This book offers a timely, clear-headed, and uniquely important contribution to conservation, one that should be read by all bureaucrats, scientists, and others involved with development projects that supposedly benefit wildlife and wilderness."and#151;George B. Schaller, author of Wildlife of the Tibetan Steppe
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 283-297) and index.