Fortress conservation
Fortress conservation is a conservation model based on the belief that biodiversity protection is best achieved by creating protected areas where ecosystems can function in isolation from human disturbance.
Economic aspects
is a billion dollar industry that is sometimes organized by criminal gangs that prey on endangered species and, in 2018, 50 park rangers were killed globally. In response, conservation charities, the biggest of which is the World Wildlife Fund, have increasingly militarized the campaign against poaching. African Parks has been at the forefront of militarization with training from South African, French and Israeli military personnel. Veterans from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been recruited to teach forest rangers counterinsurgency techniques and ex–special forces operatives promote their services at wildlife conferences. This has often involved recruiting paramilitary groups who are then supplied with military grade weaponry.Ecotourism
Money generated from ecotourism has been a motivating factor driving indigenous inhabitants off the land. The organization African Parks, whose President is Prince Harry, has as its motto "a business approach to conservation" and had at its outset that tourism is its key in making their parks financially sustainable.Carbon credits
Forests can be preserved for carbon offsets and credits that can be sold to companies to offset the carbon dioxide they produce. While there are national programs for this, it can be part of a voluntary market as well such as on the international market. Indigenous groups who live in such forests, such as in Peru, have alleged that it leads to abuses against them. Notably, the company Blue Carbon of the UAE has bought ownership over an area equivalent to the United Kingdom to be preserved in return for carbon credits.Legal aspects
Indigenous groups, such as the Okiek people, are often challenged as many do not have formal title deeds or land rights, despite having inhabited the forests for centuries. The justice system can also be used against the indigenous where, for example, people have been arrested for remaining on their land after it was granted to extractive companies by the government.The Convention on Biological Diversity has promoted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, an outcome of the 2022 United Nations Biodiversity Conference, arguing for the 30 by 30 initiative to designate 30% of Earth's land and ocean area as protected areas by 2030.
Debate
The practice of evicting inhabitants to protect nature was referred to as the Yosemite model. Famed paleontogist and conservationist Richard Leakey argued that there is no such thing as indigenous people and argued for the removal of what he referred to as “settlers” from protected areas. Steven Sanderson, who was president of the Wildlife Conservation Society, argued that the entire global conservation agenda had been “hijacked” by advocates for indigenous peoples, placing wildlife and biodiversity at peril.Others, such as indigenous rights activists, have argued that the most efficient conservation methods involve transferring rights over land from public domain to its indigenous inhabitants, who have had a stake for millennia in preserving the forests that they depend on. This includes the protection of such rights entitled in existing laws, such as the Forest Rights Act in India, where concessions to land continue to go mostly to powerful companies. The transferring of such rights in China, perhaps the largest land reform in modern times, has been argued to have increased forest cover. Granting title of the land has shown to have less clearing than state run parks, notably in the Brazilian Amazon. Even while the largest cause of deforestation in the world's second largest rainforest in the Congo is smallholder agriculture and charcoal production, areas with community concessions have significantly less deforestation as communities are incentivized to manage the land sustainably, even reducing poverty. Additionally, evicting inhabitants from protected areas often under the fortress conservation model often leads to more exploitation of the land as the native inhabitants then turn to work for extractive companies to survive.
Controversies
Up to 250,000 people worldwide have been forcibly evicted from their homes to make way for conservation projects since 1990, according to the UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples. Another estimate put the total number of people displaced between 10.8 million and 173 million. They are sometimes referred to as conservation refugees.Botswana
In Botswana, many of the indigenous San people have been forcibly relocated from their land to reservations. To make them relocate, they were denied access to water on their land and faced arrest if they hunted, which was their primary source of food. The government claims the relocation is to preserve the wildlife and ecosystem, even though the San people have lived sustainably on the land for millennia. Additionally, their lands lie in the middle of the world's richest diamond field. On the reservations they struggle to find employment, and alcoholism is rampant.Cameroon
in Cameroon's Lobéké National Park have alleged abuse by park rangers funded by the World Wildlife Fund.Democratic Republic of the Congo
In national parks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, such as Kahuzi-Biéga National Park, heavily armed park rangers come into deadly conflict with the pygmy inhabitants who often cut the trees down to sell charcoal. The conservation efforts of national parks in the country are often financed by international organizations such as the WWF and often involve removing native inhabitants off the land.Ethiopia
took over Nechisar National Park in Ethiopia in 2004 and around a thousand Koore families were resettled but when the local Gujii resisted eviction, police and park authorities torched 463 Guji homes. In the Omo Valley live the Mursi people, Surma people, Nyangatom people, Dizi people Kwegu people and Mekan people. The Omo National Park in the area was established in 1966 and the Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation Department in 1978 recommended removing the Mursi claiming they diminish the park's value. In 2005, a few randomly selected, illiterate Mursi placed their thumbprints on a document that government officials later said had meant that they had given “prior consent” to be moved out of the park. African Parks took over the Omo National Park in 2005 but left in 2007.India
The Indian government’s National Tiger Conservation Authority state that 56,247 families, more than 100,000 people have been evicted since 1972 for tiger conservation across 50 tiger reserves.In Kaziranga National Park, known to conserve two thirds of the world's Indian rhinoceroses, rangers have been given powers to shoot and kill normally only conferred on armed forces policing civil unrest. In 2015, more people were shot dead by park guards than rhinos were killed by poachers. WWF provided specialist equipment like night vision goggles and combat and ambush training for Kaziranga's guards.