World Wildlife Day: tribespeople denounce persecution in the name of 'conservation' - News from Survival
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- Published on Monday, 16 March 2015 13:46
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World Wildlife Day: tribespeople denounce persecution in the name of 'conservation'
Bayaka 'Pygmies' and Baiga speak out about the abuse by wildlife guards, and harassment to leave their lands. © Survival International
To mark World Wildlife Day on Tuesday, Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples’ rights, exposes abuses faced by tribal peoples in the name of wildlife “conservation.”
Powerful video testimonies by Bayaka “Pygmies” in the Republic of Congo highlight their intimate connection with their lands and the abuses they face at the hands of anti-poaching squads – who are often funded by large conservation organizations like the Worldwide Fund for Nature and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).
The lives of thousands of Baiga tribespeople in India were destroyed after being forcibly and illegally evicted from Kanha Tiger Reserve – home of the “Jungle Book”. Their communities have been scattered and left without land, but tourists are welcomed into the reserve.
Watch video testimonies by Bayaka and Baiga
Bayaka and Baiga speak out about abuse in the name of “conservation”Powerful video testimonies of Bayaka “Pygmies” in the Republic of Congo highlight their intimate connection with their lands and the abuses they face at the hands of wildlife officers and forest guards – who are often funded by large conservation organizations like the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Wildlife Conservation Society.
The lives of thousands of Baiga tribespeople in India were destroyed after being forcibly and illegally evicted from Kanha Tiger Reserve – home of the “Jungle Book”. Their communities have been scattered and left without land, but tourists are welcomed into the reserve.
“The ecoguards [anti-poaching squads] make us sit here starving. They have ruined our world. If we try to hunt in the forest they beat us so badly. They even kill us if they see us in the forest,” a Bayaka woman reports.
Another Bayaka woman told Survival in 2013, “The anti-poaching squad told me to move the child that was at my feet. Then they beat my back with pieces of wood and I fell to the ground. With every threat they made, they would beat me again.”
A Baiga man told Survival in 2012, “Poison us, finish us off right here, that is good, but do not uproot us.” In 2014, his community was evicted from Kanha in the name of tiger conservation.
The Baiga were forcibly and illegally evicted from Kanha Tiger Reserve – home of the 'Jungle Book.'© Survival International
Tribal peoples are the best conservationists, yet they are being illegally evicted from their ancestral homelands in the name of “conservation.”
Survival’s “Parks Need Peoples” campaign calls for a radical change of conservation policies, based on the principles that tribal peoples are the best conservationists and that forcibly removing them from their ancestral homelands usually results in environmental degradation.
Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said today, “Organizations which exist to promote wildlife conservation need to radically rethink the way they work. They need to realize it’s they, themselves, who are the junior partners, not the tribespeople whose lands are being taken, and who are being persecuted and abused.”
Notes to editors:
- Download Survival’s “Their land, our futures” conservation principles
- “Pygmy” is an umbrella term commonly used to refer to the hunter-gatherer peoples of the Congo Basin and elsewhere in Central Africa. The word is considered pejorative and avoided by some tribespeople, but used by others as a convenient and easily recognized way of describing themselves. Read more.
Read this online: http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/10676
Legal analysis finds tribal peoples persecuted unjustly for ‘wildlife crime’
Tribal peoples like the Baka in southeast Cameroon face abuse by anti-poaching squads. © Edmond Dounias/Survival
British human rights lawyer Gordon Bennett has issued a damning legal analysis of the negative impacts of wildlife law enforcement on tribal peoples in Botswana, Cameroon and India during a symposium organized by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and others on “wildlife crime” on Friday.
Mr Bennett presented a paper which argues that wildlife law enforcement almost always harms tribal communities because the wrong laws are being enforced by the wrong people against the wrong people – with examples from Botswana, Cameroon and India.
The Kalahari Bushmen’s right to hunt for food is a fundamental human right confirmed by Botswana’s High Court. President Khama has illegally banned all hunting in the country – except for wealthy trophy hunters. Bushmen caught hunting are arrested, beaten and tortured.
Bushman spokesperson Jumanda Gakelebone said, “We are still hunter-gatherers. We want to be recognized as hunter-gatherers. If you say don’t hunt, it means don’t eat. If you are going to ban hunting, you have to consult us. You’re going to turn us into poachers. But hunting for us has never been about poaching. We hunt for food.”
The Bushmen have been criminalized for hunting to feed their families by the Botswana government.© Philippe Clotuche/Survival
In India, efforts to save the tiger have led to the illegal eviction of countless communities . In Cameroon, Baka “Pygmies” have been beaten or tortured by anti-poaching squads and now fear going into their forest, with devastating consequences for their health, livelihoods and indigenous knowledge.
Mr Bennett called on conservationists to implement a radically different approach which listens to tribal peoples’ voices as the “eyes and ears of the land,” and respects their rights.
The symposium in South Africa precedes a major intergovernmental conference on the illegal wildlife trade in Kasane, Botswana, in March 2015. Governments, as well as the consortium of conservation organizations “United for Wildlife” have been criticized for failing to publicly acknowledge that tribal hunters are not poachers .
Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said today, “Tribal people and Survival International are calling on the conference in Botswana and United For Wildlife organizations to issue a statement on tribal subsistence hunting: 'Tribal peoples shouldn’t be criminalized for hunting to feed their families.'”
Notes to editors:
- Download the paper “Negative impacts of wildlife law enforcement in Botswana, Cameroon and India” (pdf, 60 KB), authored by Gordon Bennett (Barrister), Dr Jo Woodman (senior campaigner at Survival International), Jumanda Gakelebone (Gana Bushman, First People of the Kalahari, Botswana), Sankar Pani (Environmental lawyer, India), Dr Jerome Lewis (Co-director, Extreme Citizen Science Research Group, University College London)
- The intergovernmental conference on the illegal wildlife trade will be held in Kasane, Botswana, on March 25, 2015;
- Survival recently launched its Parks Need Peoples campaign to challenge a model of conservation that has led to the persecution of tribal people, based on these 5 principles;
- “Pygmy” is an umbrella term commonly used to refer to the hunter-gatherer peoples of the Congo Basin and elsewhere in Central Africa. The word is considered pejorative and avoided by some tribespeople, but used by others as a convenient and easily recognized way of describing themselves. Read more.
Read this online: http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/10675
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