ABSTRACT
Academic interest surrounding the role of indigenous knowledge in biodiversity conservation has expanded. However, the ways in which public communications present local and external knowledge, and corresponding impacts on conservation practices, remain understudied. Taking African elephant conservation and associated newspaper coverage in the United Kingdom and sub-Saharan Africa as its focus, this chapter examines whether the privileging or omission of certain voices and viewpoints may affect the extent to which conservation policies and actions are locally and contextually situated. It finds a bias towards externally oriented voices and statistical information concerning crime and ivory demand, to the near exclusion of local voices and more complex narratives such as human-elephant conflict and habitat loss. The privileging of certain voices and narratives may link to prohibitive legislation and species-centric investments that dispossess Africans of agency in managing resources. A greater risk is the potential to disengage local Africans from conservation efforts.
