The Encroaching Forest: Struggles Over Land and Resources on the Boundary of Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda

Abstract

The expansion of outside, particularly state, control into rural areas through policies designed to protect and serve endangered wildlife has found increasing significance within studies on human–wildlife conflicts. This article expands the scope of these investigations by forwarding a case study from Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, in southwest Uganda, of a thriving protected area whose continued success has necessitated its expansion into privately owned land. I argue that such encroachment represents a new form of control, namely, through the dispossession of private property via conservation policies that not only restrict rural farmers from responding to incidents of crop raiding but also prevent local communities from accessing their own land.

Keywords:

• Africa
• conservation
• ecotourism
• human–wildlife conflict
• political ecology
• protected areas
• Uganda

Notes

Pseudonyms were applied to protect the privacy of each individual interviewed and thus all names used throughout this article have been changed.

However, protectionist arguments have seen a resurgence within the conservation biology and ecology literatures (e.g., Terborgh et al. 2002; for a comprehensive critical review see Wilshusen et al. 2002).

These numbers represent crop raiding by nonhabituated gorillas and consider the consumption of banana plants only. Nor do these numbers represent time spent in community land not consuming crops, which may indirectly result in decreased crop productivity by preventing farmers from accessing their farms. In 1989, for example, rangers reported that a group of six gorillas stayed in community land for a month (Baker 2005).

Failure to compensate for crops damaged by animals foraging from the park continues remains the greatest issue of discontentment communities voice toward the park (see also Archabald and Naughton-Treves 2001).