Residents’ attitudes toward three protected areas in southwestern Nepal

Abstract

Understanding people's beliefs and attitudes toward protected areas is a key factor in developing successful management plans to conserve those areas over the long-term. Yet, most of the emphasis in understanding people's perceptions has been on the conflicts that exist between people and protected areas, such as loss of traditional extraction access or damage by wildlife to crops and livestock. This study addresses the need to explore people's attitudes toward protected areas in a way that allows them to define and describe the values they hold toward the areas and the relevant issues and concepts. Three contrasting protected areas in the southwestern region of Nepal were chosen for this study to gain a broad representation of the values people hold toward different types of protected areas. Three themes emerged that describe the positive perceptions residents have: recreation/esthetics, environmental preservation, and economic benefits. Four themes emerged that describe the negative perceptions: negative economic impacts, belief that benefits are for the government or foreigners, fear of wildlife, and negative interactions with park guards. People's perceptions are affected by different aspects of the areas, including the size of the area and people's access to them, management objectives, history, and tourism. The diversity of these perceptions suggests that conservation strategies should recognize both positive and negative perceptions and work to foster and integrate diverse values in order to more accurately reflect the reality and complexity of people's lives.

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“…While Nepal's policies have had their limitations and are not without flaws, they have provided a vision for the way that communities can participate in and benefit from protected areas (Budhathoki, 2004;Heinen & Kattel, 1992;Heinen & Mehta, 2000). One indicator of Nepal's success is that while there continue to be conflict issues around protected areas in Nepal, people are generally supportive of conservation and of neighbouring protected areas (Allendorf, 2007;Allendorf & Allendorf, 2012;Mehta & Heinen, 2001;Nepal & Spiteri, 2011;Nepal & Weber, 1995;Sah & Heinen, 2001).…”

Toward conservational anthropology: addressing anthropocentric bias in anthropology

“…In Asia and Africa, local people frequently view wildlife from protected areas as pests (Infield 1988b;Newmark et al 1993;Grundy 1995;Infield and Namara 2001;Allendorf et al 2006;Trusty 2011), something to be feared (Infield 1988a;Allendorf 2007), or as valued by the government more than they value the local people (Brockington 2002;Igoe 2004).…”

Re-examining culture/conservation conflict: the view of anthropology of conservation through the lens of environmental ethics

“…If no one needs bald ibises for anything, Tsepo reasoned, why bother to preserve them? (Grundy 1995, p. 7) In her paper on factors influencing local attitudes toward protected areas Trusty (2011) notes that in Asia and Africa, local people frequently view wildlife from protected areas as pests (Infield 1988;Newmark et al 1993;Infield and Namara 2001;Allendorf et al 2006), something to be feared (Infield 1988;Allendorf 2007), or as valued by the government more than they value the local people that the government values over themselves (Brockington 2002;Igoe 2004). Kottak (1999) reflects that in Madagascar, many intellectuals and officials are bothered that foreigners seem more concerned about lemurs and other endangered species than about Madagascar's people.…”