Imposing Wilderness

Arusha National Park in northern Tanzania, known for its scenic beauty, embodies in microcosm all the political-ecological dilemmas facing protected areas throughout Africa: it is, in part, a battle ground. The roots of the ongoing struggle between the park on Mount Meru and the neighboring Meru peasant communities go much deeper, in Roderick Neumann's illuminating analysis, than the issues of poverty, population growth, and ignorance usually cited. The conflicts regularly erupting there and elsewhere reflect differences that go back to the beginning of colonial rule. By imposing a European…