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Diffusing Conservation to Post-Colonial Africa
Abstract:
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%">As global climate change, habitat loss, and other threats undermine global biodiversity, protected areas have increased in importance. However, the historic development and spatial diffusion of such spaces and their management are complex, stimulating a lively discussion among conservation biologists, environmental historians, geographers, and political scientists. From where and when did global wildlife and protected-area policies emerge and diffuse? Why and how were they adopted and modified? Which policies were promoted, and which were not? This presentation is a contribution to these discussions with a focus on links between early post-colonial Africa and the United States. </p><p>In summer 1965, three groups of African nationals enrolled at American universities assembled at Havasu National Wildlife Refuge, Yellowstone National Park, and Olympic National Park to participate in the African Student Training Program. Begun in 1961, annually staged on the Interior Department’s protected areas in the Pacific Northwest and Interior West, and run by the National Park Service, the three-week program was a Cold War effort to enhance the appreciation of “future African leaders” for conservation and their countries’ protected areas. Most of the fourteen participants majored in such disciplines as engineering or history, but five were forestry majors and all were interested in nature conservation. This program was an early effort by the National Park Service and its sibling agencies at the Interior Department to internationally diffuse America’s conservation practices and, arguably, the first protected-areas program developed by a nation that trusted others would voluntarily adopt its ideas and methods.</p>
Keywords: national parks, protected areas, diffusion, Africa, United States
Authors:
Terence Young, Cal Poly Pomona; Submitting Author / Primary Presenter
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Diffusing Conservation to Post-Colonial Africa
Category
In-Person Paper Abstract