Parks and place fragments: the implications of biodiversity protection in Tanzania and Indiana

Abstract

Parks and protected areas throughout the world can create place fragments where park boundaries seek to preserve and protect landscapes by dissociating social and ecological processes. Along these lines, park boarders that are designed to privilege one set of processes over another or obfuscate some processes altogether will impoverish all processes, catalyze adaptation and change, and undermine the historic foundations on which charismatic landscapes have evolved. This paper offers a qualitative comparison of Tarangire National Park in northern Tanzania and Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore in northern Indiana and argues that in both cases the parks have undermined historically derived social and ecological interactions with the effect of disrupting the wholeness and/or functionality of these spaces in ecological terms and the meaning of these spaces to both local communities and foreign visitors.

Keywords:

• Tanzania
• Indiana
• conservation
• parks
• place fragments