From the First Nations Development Institute.

• Author: Adamson, Rebecca
• Position: FROM READERS - Letter to the Editor

Thank you for having the courage and integrity to print "A Challenge to Conservationists" by Mac Chapin. I first wrote about this issue in the Environmental Grantmakers Association News & Updates Winter 2003 ("A Caution on Soft-Eviction Strategies," www.ega.org/resources/newsletters/win2003/softevictions.html).

The issue of displacing indigenous peoples from protected areas is under heavy debate within the contemporary international conservationist movement. For any conservation organization to claim otherwise is at best disingenuous. In 2003 Dr. Kai Schmidt-Soltau and Professor Michael Cernea published a seven-year study on indigenous people who were displaced in six Congo basin countries to make way for protected areas and national parks. World Wildlife Fund and Wildlife Conservation Society were the lead NGOs involved. The total number of people displaced is estimated to be between 40,000 and 50,000, with approximately half being Pygmies. Schmidt-Soltau and Cernea found that "in contrast to the declared concept of collaborative management, none of the surveyed protected areas had adopted an official strategy to...