ABSTRACT
The pursuit of environmental conservation has been a significant theme in rural development in the twentieth century. Conservationist beliefs have generally held that there is an inverse relationship between human actions and the well-being of the environment. Professionals have widely agreed that problems such as soil erosion, degradation of rangelands, desertification, loss of forests and the destruction of wildlife require intervention to prevent further deterioration. At the same time, official policies have consistently defined local misuse of resources as the principal cause of destruction (Pimbert and Pretty, 1995).
