Thread by @am_anatiala

this is the twitter version of the lecture I gave to an undergraduate wildlife management class, called "Conservation and How Colonialism Fucked Everything" (not really).

short version: #bloodparks

I was taught a sanitized version of American wildlife management/conservation. it's only through self-study/listening that I learned any of this. By not acknowledging the violence that occurred in the US w/ regards to wildlife/resources we do our students a disservice #bloodparks

look at the news for a week & you hear plenty of news about how there's a biodiversity crisis. we're losing species at a v high rate. we're in the sixth mass extinction.

we blame proximate causes..."poaching", recent deforestation, but that's not where it started. #bloodparks

if we want to know how we got here, if we want to know the ultimate cause, we need to look back further than a few decades. I'm talking a few centuries. specifically, five. #bloodparks

(this thread is going to be a long one and might take more than an hour to tweet as I'm doing it on the fly which is why I made a hashtag. feel free to pop in and out) #bloodparks

why go back this far, to this point in particular? because basically this is when a new predator (europeans) with new hunting strategies (guns) entered the eco-arena. if you want to look at another example, look back on the pleistocene megafauna extinctions. #bloodparks

"modern" humans were leaving africa, moving into new lands, like the americas, australia, etc. places that had animals that hadn't had to deal with human predation before. that + climate change is believed to have caused extinctions #bloodparks en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternar…

if we were back in that time, less than a millennia after that extinction pulse, we wouldn't have to go back too far to see what the catalyst was. it's the same with our current crisis. but this time, it was colonizers that were the catalyst #bloodparks

and for those saying "well it's been so long why are you still on that get over it" here's a pretty basic run-down of why we shouldn't "get over it" #bloodparks

*hides from d*sne*

structure of this thread: i'll be moving through these periods. and since you guys are a captive audience and there's no time limit on my tweeting, i will be musing about the future. #bloodparks

colonization was a violent process. murder, rape, theft, all the biggies. and because the colonizers weren't psychopaths, they had to tell themselves some lies to deal with the hideous trauma that they were perpetrating on other humans. let's look at some. #bloodparks

one group of lies was that the "primitive" people they were coming into contact with weren't managing their resources properly. either they were savages, sure to slaughter and use up everything, or they were "noble", and not "developing" their land #bloodparks

this is really fucking wrong. if these people had lived so long with their land and wildlife and hadn't drove everything to extinction, they had some way of "managing" their resources. it just wasn't the european way. #bloodparks

plenty of native american tribes used controlled burns to manage the lands around them. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Am…

if you're a wildlifer, you probably know that after centuries of european suppression of fire in ecosystems that need it, we're moving back to that again. #bloodparks

next lie and this is where science comes in (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧

it's called scientific racism!

this image is from Nott & Giddon's Types of Mankind from 1854 #bloodparks

scientific racism is basically the use of science to say that the different races are biologically different. mainly used by those who's lives are so lacking in pleasure that they have to take solace in the idea of them being "superior" by virtue of their skin color. #bloodparks

i'm sure anthropology remembers the use of calipers to measure skulls & using it to determine social/cultural characteristics. karl vogt, who still has a bust in the front of geneva u, believed whites & blacks were separate species, with the latter descended from apes #bloodparks

i was taught that georges cuvier was the father of paleontology & he was one of the first that suggested that extinction was, you know, a thing. what i *wasn't* taught was that he also influenced the scientific racism field. #bloodparks

Carl Linneaus was the dude who came up with the species naming system we use today. he published systema naturae in 1767 in which he breaks humans down to 5 varieties. asians were "greedy", blacks were "sly", and white people were "inventive" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientifi… #bloodparks

scientific racism was used to suggest that indigenous peoples were either inferior to europeans or not people at all. and once you get to the idea of something not being human, it gets really easy to give yourself permission to do whatever you want. #bloodparks

finally, there was the idea of terra nullius: no man's land. lynn meskell goes into this well. #bloodparks

so white people took what they wished. carved up indigenous land for their own use. the indigenous that tried to use their lands or harvest wildlife were either stopped by fences/patrols or by laws (e.g., needing a really expensive gun to hunt legally) #bloodparks

and then we get into the overexploitation. they (colonizers) cut down forests for farmland, or for timber (shipbuilding used up a lot of wood). they tore up the land mining for precious minerals. and they slaughtered a lot of animals. #bloodparks

the global tiger pop is < 4k

Mahesh Rangarajan, a historian: "over 80k tigers, 150k+ leopards, & 200k wolves were slaughtered [in British India] in the 50 years from 1875-1925. it is possible this was only a fraction of the #s actually slain." blog.nationalgeographic.org/2014/03/10/a-c… #bloodparks

wildlifers are taught the bison as a conservation success story. we're not taught that the reason they were near extinction in the first place was colonizers trying to destroy this resource that was much-needed by natives. theatlantic.com/national/archi… #bloodparks

elephants have been in the news recently (more on that later). nationalgeographic.org/media/history-…

that video starts in the 1900s. go back to the 1800s & you get a better feel of things.

ivory trade has been going on for a looooong time. but not like what colonizers did.

#bloodparks

so just imagine all of this deforestation, all of these wild animals being killed, all of these natural resources being taken...all over the world. this is WEALTH that is being stolen from the Global South & taken to the Global North. this is how we got "developed" #bloodparks

*INTERMISSION*

this rate of exploitation couldn't go on forever. colonizers felt that they needed to set aside these lands and protect the resources. Yellowstone (1872) is US's 1st national park. Bogd Khan mountain (Mongolia) is the 1st legally protected area in the world (1778). #bloodparks

key difference: Bogd Khan was set aside by the *locals* because it was sacred. in the case of Yellowstone, the land was set aside by the colonizers. dozens of tribes used & lived in the area. they were kicked out, after being promised they could still use the area. #bloodparks

this exclusion of the tribes was backed up by the army patrolling the park. which is how you end up with places called "Dead Indian Pass".

(the Nez Perce escaped the army by making it down a canyon with their elderly, women, and children, and a lot of horses)

#bloodparks

this violence happened across the world. australia's 1st national park (royal np) was created soon after with little fuss. little fuss due to the appin massacre--folks shooting into a camp & driving the Dharawal over a cliff--that had happened decades earlier. #bloodparks

let's use tongariro national park in new zealand as an example. the first few websites you find all say that a chief *gifted* the lands to the Crown.

it's the truth, but it's not the truth. and it requires a lot of digging to find the full truth. #bloodparks

what happened was the British defeated the Kīngitanga, which at one point united 2000 Māori chiefs, at the invasion of Waikato in 1864. They set up a Native Lands court, made it illegal for tribes to communally own lands, & made the Māori argue their property rights. #bloodparks

one tribe's chief, Horonoku, learned that volcanoes sacred to them had been leased to the British as places to raise sheep.

an Irish minister suggested he give the lands under the condition that they protect it. he did. shockingly, the British held up their end #bloodparks

I include that as an example because it wasn't always violence that colonizers used to create national parks/protected areas. They also used laws. Sometimes they used the excuse of disease. They had a whole arsenal for land-stealing. #bloodparks

in 1933 the countries with African colonies gathered to discuss wildlife declines. They decided to define national parks as areas where hunting/destruction of plants was prohibited except for w/ permission from park authorities (or, colonizers) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventio… #bloodparks

it was talked about in @nature and @sciencemagazine nature.com/articles/13277…
science.sciencemag.org/content/78/202…
#bloodparks

in 1962 during the First World Congress on National Parks, we see an emphasis on wildlife as "an inheritance belonging to all the people" and the ideas that international NGOs (non-governmental orgs) help with parks and of nature as a tourist attraction (aka $$$). #bloodparks

with the Stockholm conference in 1972 and the Earth Summit in 1992, we start seeing the schism between the developed/Global North & the developing/Global South. the GN is more worried about the environment. the GS, poverty alleviation/development. #bloodparks

Agenda 21 came out of the Earth Summit & read the GN to filth sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/docume….

it said that consumption & production (looks at GN) was a problem & that the GN should pony up the $ to help w/ the shit the GS would have to do for the world.

was non-binding tho #bloodparks

during the 1900s it is believed that at least 10-20 mil people were kicked off their lands in the name of conservation. we thought that conservation & people didn't mix (some still do). but w/ the new focus on human rights & development, we needed to change. #bloodparks

we start seeing community-based natural resource management, giving the powers back to the locals. it was & still is being tried. but those in charge (many are intl NGOs) don't want to give up too much power. probably don't trust the locals to keep conservation at #1 #bloodparks

we also start seeing a connection between nature and money. we got studies saying that the things that nature does for us (called ecosystem services) are worth a lot of money. like 33 trillion a year money. #bloodparks

"making nature pay" became the new thing. we're talking about ecotourism, trophy hunting, REDD+. all of them were touted as win-win situations. they were presented as ways to make locals see that their natural resources were beneficial. 🙄 #bloodparks

of course, they're not all win-win. surprise #bloodparks

ecotourism (tourists w/ $ to spend go to places to see nature) is nice when it works. but it requires tons of things to make it work. you have upfront costs (building signs/hotels/etc.). things need to be politically stable. tourists need to be able to get there #bloodparks

here's an example of what that would look like vimeo.com/144653401 #bloodparks

here's the video run-down. elephants are causing problems by eating the locals' crops. locals kill elephants. a british charity micaia.org/eco/ & the world bank give/loan the locals $ to make a tourist lodge. locals get jobs. tourists see 🐘. #bloodparks

but all that wouldn't have happened if those two international organizations hadn't stepped in. the charity owns 40% of the lodge. and there are only so many service (b/c it is largely service) jobs in one lodge. and then we have the issue of dignity #bloodparks

people are ignorant. we know this. a lot of the tourists want to see *exotic* people when they go to *exotic* locales. locals might be forced to play the part of a grass-skirt wearing native when they typically wear t-shirts & jorts. researchgate.net/publication/26… #bloodparks

tourists think that since they're paying, they can do what they want. a Manggarai woman (Ursula) talks about tourists picking up kids as if they were theirs. think of how you'd feel if someone came up & picked up your child. it's disrespectful #bloodparks news.mongabay.com/2018/08/an-ind…

what about REDD+? this is the acronym for a UN program, "reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation". the idea behind this is bizs can pay locals to protect forests & emit carbon, since forests are carbon sinks. #bloodparks

but how do you pay the right person for protecting their forested land if property rights are all fucked up (thx colonizers)? & do people care about taking carbon out of the air in a culture that believes that climate change isn't human-caused (or that it's too late)? #bloodparks

i'm not going to waste my time on trophy hunting. here's a slide. #bloodparks

and so the situation today, especially for the people who aren't versed in all this, is that we've got all these crises happening. and for some reason, when comparing how many animals there used to be, folks compare to around the early 1900s or so. thx @paigebyerly #bloodparks

the solutions aren't working or aren't being given enough ⏳ to work. there's a pervasive sense that a Namibian 🐘 or a Nepalese 🐅 is the heritage of some Kentucky kid. there's a sense of desperation that's felt when some1 is destroying ur property & u can't stop it #bloodparks

folks are being taught a sanitized version of history in which europeans moved into different countries > ??? > democracy or whatever.

folks are also being taught to hate the poor. that poverty is a personal failure. and the GS can be poverty-stricken #bloodparks

why don't these poor ppl get that they're causing species extinction??? (when it was colonizers that pushed them near there)

there's rage towards "poachers" (aka locals that are harvesting *their* animals). people will use this to push their conservation objectives. #bloodparks

i assume you guys heard of the elephant massacre that happened in Botswana a month or so ago. @ElesWoutBorders reported 90 elephants killed over a space of months. all poached for their ivory. went viral. #bloodparks huffingtonpost.com/entry/botswana…

read the comments on some of that org's tweets regarding the story (cuz they tweeted that story a lot & little else). you've got folks frothing at the mouth. and repeated, that the new Botswanan prez disarmed the anti-poaching unit a few months before the massacre. #bloodparks

turns out that there was no massacre. earther.gizmodo.com/that-viral-ele…

the anti-poaching unit is not "disarmed". they just don't have automatics anymore.

this was because Botswana has a shoot-to-kill policy, suspected some Namibians of poaching, killed them, caused tension #bloodparks

53 elephants were reported this summer, most dead from natural causes. but you still had this sudden international attention on the way Botswana deals with poachers because of the original story. #bloodparks

this idea that the anti-poaching units are "disarmed" because they don't have automatics anymore just shows how normalized the idea of these anti-poaching shoot-to-kill policies. the narrative now is that we are in a (just) war for species conservation. #bloodparks

in 2012 the elephant action league coined the term "white gold" in a report they wrote where they connected ivory poaching & terrorism (which they later walked back on). this was picked up by the NYT & the idea of poacher-terrorism caught. #bloodparks elephantleague.org/project/africa…

the senate strengthened anti-wildlife trafficking laws, in part due to "increasing evidence that wildlife trafficking is funding armed insurgencies like Al-Shaabab, LRA, and the Janjaweed..." #bloodparks feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.c…

connect poaching to terrorism & you got further motive to use military practices towards poachers. despite "poaching" being largely caused by poverty/limited access to meat (at least in Madagascar's case). #bloodparks

so you end up with these kinds of things virungamovie.com/trailer/, selling the war for conservation as a simplified story of heroes & villains, your average American shoot up... #bloodparks

while ignoring (or not pushing as hard) the fact that some of these anti-poaching units are violating human rights. and ignoring the fact that we've essentially agreed that an elephant is more important than the life of a (suspected) poacher #bloodparks news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/09/wildli…

that we're basically right back (or maybe we never left) when (white) men round up (black) men and beat them for suspected illegal activities because how dare they take what's not theirs (the wildlife) newsweek.com/2017/08/18/tro… #bloodparks

and really REALLY not looking at the fact that, no, it's not because there are too many damned Africans/Indians/etc. that we're in a crisis, it's because the avg American uses more resources than most people do #bloodparks scientificamerican.com/article/americ…

and that the idea of "controlling the population" is connected to the (white) horror over the idea of black/brown peoples outnumbering them and basically taking over #bloodparks

https://twitter.com/ztsamudzi/status/1051903549297160192

anyways I don't have any solutions but I do agree with Agenda 21's idea of the GN *paying* the GS for conservation. because that would be a step towards giving the GS *their* wealth back. #bloodparks

https://twitter.com/am_anatiala/status/1052578932644610049

here are the TLDRs

@cynth_malone is the one that intro'd me to decolonization when it came to wildlife, so have to thank her.

thxs to @aveamphibious for letting me give this presentation to the class :)

& here's a selection of 🔑 readings: drive.google.com/open?id=1v5azi…
#bloodparks

and don't let *THEM* have you out here looking stupid and blaming some Zimbabwean or Sumatran for where we are today