ABSTRACT

Yet the WWF advertisement provides a useful warning, as it offers a perfect illustration of the dominant conservationist mindset. Unfortunately for indigenous peoples, most western conservationists still cling to a romantic, Eurocentric conception of nature as an empty, unspoiled wilderness, separate from and uncontaminated by humanity . . . in which the indigenous inhabitants of these ‘wildernesses’ are at best an inconvenient disruption of the great romantic myth, at worst a menace to be repelled by barbed wire and guns.