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Parks, Proxies, and People
Ideology, Epistemology, and the Measurement of Human Population Growth on Protected Area Edges
in Environment and Society
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ABSTRACT
There is an extensive literature about growing human populations on protected area (PA) edges and their contribution to biodiversity threats. This article reviews the conservation literature’s engagements with the question of human migration and population growth on PA edges by reviewing: (1) the normative basis of conservation biology; (2) the development of conservation science in response; (3) conservationist engagements with PAs, migration, and population growth; (4) the engagement with George Wittemyer and colleagues (2008); and (5) the landscape of analyses and debates regarding PAs and their relationship to migration. The review finds that a strong biocentric position of conservation biology is evident and discusses the impacts that this position has on research, conclusions, and policies intended to cope with this growing issue.
Contributor Notes
DAVID HOFFMAN is Associate Professor of cultural anthropology at Mississippi State University. He received his PhD in 2006 in cultural anthropology from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2006. His research in environmental anthropology generally focuses on sustainable development, comanagement, resource management, biodiversity conservation, and the interaction of parks and protected areas with the development and livelihood needs of adjacent human communities. Since 2009, he has researched the movement of Costa Rican migrants to the edges of Costa Rican national parks. E-mail: dhoffman@anthro.msstate.edu