From Debate to Insight: Three Models of Immigration to Protected Areas

In 2007 the Galapagos, background of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, made news headlines when UNESCO declared the Archipelago a World Heritage Site “in danger” (UNESCO 2007). Tourism had triggered an escalating immigration of people coming from the continent in search of employment. Its population, less than 2,000 in 1950, was up to 25,000, putting unsustainable pressures on limited resources (Gonzales et al. 2008). In 2008 the Virungas, protected areas on the borders of Congo, Rwanda, and Uganda, known for Gorillas in the Mist, made the news (Jenkins & Stirton 2008). Already a World Heritage Site in danger, the Virungas had witnessed for the second time in a decade an influx of hundreds of thousands of people in its surroundings. A few months later, it was reported that deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon had risen 64%, reaching an annual 8146 km2. Loggers, followed by farmers, are penetrating deep into the forest, setting back Brazil’s conservation efforts (Philips 2008). Little guidance is given to protected area (PA) managers and decision makers to deal with immigration. A decade ago, preliminary reports appeared on the impact of immigration on PAs (Noss 1997; De Sherbenin & Freudenberger 1998; Oates 1999). The first quantitative case study, in Waza-Logone, Cameroon, showed that conservation projects can trigger immigration (Scholte 2003). These case studies emphasized the need for socioeconomic monitoring to assess immigration. They also cautioned against combining conservation with development. More comprehensive studies on migration to protected areas have been published recently (Oglethorpe et al. 2007; Wittemyer et al. 2008), and we build our argument here on these studies. Oglethorpe et al. (2007) elaborate