National Parks and the Growth of Tourism

Imperial expansion transformed and destroyed nature in many areas; yet, as we argue, it also contained conservationist impulses. On the one hand these involved attempts to modify practices on land that was used for agriculture both by settlers and indigenous people. On the other, land was reserved more directly by creating zones where human settlement was disallowed. In the case of forests, this often implied scientific management and controlled commercial logging—although some forests were more tightly protected. With regard to wildlife and protected habitats, settler and colonial governments placed greater emphasis on exclusion in their conservation strategies. This chapter will chart changes in attitude and policy towards protected areas, as tourists replaced elite travellers and white hunters in answering the call of the wild. As in the last chapter, our discussion moves beyond the colonial period. While we focus on countries that became part of the Commonwealth, independent states were operating in a changing international context of which the imperial heritage was only one element. We recognize the shift towards community management of natural resources, and the potential for tourism to generate income for poor people. But we argue that the legacy of exclusive conservation, informed partly by new concerns and interests, remained powerful. It is an ambivalent legacy, still the subject of intense debate and contestation, and heavily criticized in recent literature on Africa. While conservation has helped to preserve some habitats and threatened species, a point not often recognized in critiques, it has not often won local legitimacy. In discussions of wildlife protection, policies of preservation are sometimes distinguished from conservation. The boundaries between these ideas are not easily drawn. In general, preservation is seen as an earlier phase and ‘is posited on...the prevention of any active interference whatsoever’. More recently, such strategies have been adopted in highly protected wilderness zones. Conservation is seen as a later, more interventionist phase. It implies wise usage or management to ensure the long-term viability of a natural resource—much in the way that ‘sustainable’ is used now. In fact, preservation often also requires some degree of management. With respect to wildlife, conservationist approaches became associated with viewing by tourists.

Archaeology · Colonialism · Context (archaeology) · Environmental ethics · Environmental planning · Ethnology · Geography · Habitat · Indigenous · Legitimacy · Political science · Politics · Threatened species · Tourism · Wildlife · Wildlife conservation · Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management · Diverse Aspects of Tourism Research · Ecology · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law