| Unit name | Anthropology and Conservation |
|---|---|
| Unit code | ARCH35005 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | H/6 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
| Unit director | Professor. Kate Robson Brown |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
None |
| Co-requisites |
None |
| School/department | Department of Anthropology and Archaeology |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
People and wildlife frequently come into conflict as they compete for valuable resources. Historically, a preservationist ideology advocated complete separation by creating protected areas and removing local people from sites of conservation interest. More recently, programmes have promoted the role of local communities in wildlife management in an effort to improve livelihoods alongside an environmental objective.
However, neither approach appears to be the panacea that international conservation or the sustainable development movement had hoped for; many local communities still live in abject poverty and wildlife populations are disappearing at an unprecedented rate.
This course will examine how people can be both the problem and solution to conservation. Focussing primarily (but not exclusively) on primates, we will look at how hunting, habitat clearance and live capture have impacted upon wild populations. This will be considered alongside an examination of the role of protected areas, community wildlife management, ecotourism and environmental education in conservation programmes.
