Socio-ecological Systems (5-minute Video)
Professor Richard Fynn from the Okavango Research Institute in Maun, Botswana, specializes in rangeland ecology, wildlife ecology, and conservation science.
He believes that Western-based conservation paradigms, such as the idea that the African wilderness was once a vast, untouched wilderness with no influence of people, are spurious.
History shows that communities were everywhere, and people lived with and benefited from wildlife and domestic animals.
It was a diverse income for them, and they had a vested interest in conserving the areas in which they lived.
The problem comes with you try to manage these systems as an ecological system alone, with no regard for communities.
Conservationists need to understand that conservation areas are not just ecological areas.
They are critically linked to people around them to political influences, and as such, in science, they are described as socio-ecological systems.
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