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Pendjari National Park in northern Benin is not only a tourist attraction and an area for the protection of biodiversity, it is also a showcase for participatory management approaches. Since its foundation as an animal protection area in 1954 under French colonial rule, the park has been object of often conflictual but productive negotiations between different groups of neighboring dwellers, such as peasants, herdsmen and hunters, as well as the park administration itself. During 19 months of fieldwork, ethnographic data on conflicts and negotiation processes were collected. Their detailed analyses show how different groups of actors construct the park as a socially relevant entity. Data from historical investigation and an extended case study of the participatory attempts at cooperation between the park administration and local hunters illustrate the social construction of spaces, identities as well as norms, values and institutions: Local hunters consider the park primarily a nowadays illegal hunting ground and a domain of spirits, while park administrators and international development actors declare it a zone of state-protected biodiversity. By showing how the national park and related spaces, identities, norms, values and institutions are socially produced, the analysis contributes to recent debates in the field of human-environment interaction and especially political ecology. Moreover, it offers complex insights and practical recommendations regarding participatory approaches to the management of natural resources and especially national parks.

National parks and reserves.

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National parks and reserves --- Protection

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National parks and reserves --- Biodiversity conservation. --- Management.

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Bird watching --- Bird watching --- National parks and reserves --- National parks and reserves

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"This volume brings together case studies from around the globe (including China, Latin America, the Philippines, Namibia, India and Europe) to explore the history of nature conservation in the twentieth century. It seeks to highlight the state, a central actor in these efforts, which is often taken for granted, and establishes a novel concept -- the nature state -- as a means for exploring the historical formation of that portion of the state dedicated to managing and protecting nature.Following the Industrial Revolution and post-war exponential increase in human population and consumption, conservation in myriad forms has been one particularly visible way in which the government and its agencies have tried to control, manage or produce nature for reasons other than raw exploitation. Using an interdisciplinary approach and including case studies from across the globe, this edited collection brings together geographers, sociologists, anthropologists and historians in order to examine the degree to which sociopolitical regimes facilitate and shape the emergence and development of nature states. This innovative work marks an early intervention in the tentative turn towards the state in environmental history and will be of great interest to students and practitioners of environmental history, social anthropology and conservation studies. ?"--Provided by publisher.

Nature conservation --- National parks and reserves --- History --- History. --- Government policy