I am working on an article (under my Mongabay Special Reporting Initiative grant) about how people have been displaced in the name of conservation (³conservation refugees²) including ³soft evictions² where people stay on the land but their rights of access to local resources are taken away.
One example I am seeking an expert on is the Monarch Butterfly reserve in Oaxaca Mexico. Locals (some indigenous) have land tenure but their rights to access the forest were taken away with the reserves creation, without any consultation. As a result (and in line with Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom¹s theory) logging has INCREASED since the certain of the reserve (see this aerial image: http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view.php?id=8506). I have read research by Anthropologist Catherine Tucker about this, but it was in the 2000s. I would like to talk to someone who is currently working on the butterflies in the region so that I can get an update. I know WWF works there (and can to some extent be ³blamed² for the ill-planned reserve planning that occurred without any consultation with the locals) so I would love to talk to someone with them, or a scientist who can give me the low-down on how logging is continuing or has it reduced lately? Email me at wendeenicole AT gmail DOT com. Thanks! And for old hippies like me (OK I am ³hippie spawn²) check out my latest article Ecotopia Emerging (how research has backed up the utopian hippie classic novel! http://news.mongabay.com/2014/0626-sri-nicole-ecotopia-emerging-agrawal-prof ile.html) Wendee Wendee Nicole, M.S. Wildlife Ecology Freelance Writer * Photographer * Bohemian Web: http://www.wendeenicole.com Adventures Blog: http://bohemianadventures.blogspot.com Writing Green ~ online class http://www.wendeenicole.com/nature.htm
