Redefining Local Communities Identity, Aspirations and Interest in Protected Area Management: A Study of the Double Drift Game Reserve

Abstract

The protectionism approach often adopted by protected area management systems has compounded the problems of poverty, dis-empowerment and population pressure in the neighborhood communities. Consequently there has been growing dissent to this mode of conservation from the underdeveloped rural communities, who have often paid high price for protection of the given resources, this problem has been further exacerbated by local communities exclusion from decision making process, resource sharing and appropriation of economic accruals from protected areas