#20 Dr. Mordecai Ogada - The Big Conservation Lie and Other Fallacies

<p>On this episode of “Death in The Garden,” Jake and Maren interview carnivore ecologist and conservation writer <a href='https://ogada.co.ke/about/'>Dr. Mordecai Ogada</a>. He is the Executive Director of <a href='http://www.csa.or.ke/overview/'>Conservation Solutions Afrika</a>, which aims to transform conservation in Africa to a model that includes humans in relationship to the land and wildlife. Ogada, alongside journalist John Mbaria, wrote the book <a href='https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0692787216/ref=as_li_tl?camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0692787216&ie=UTF8&linkCode=as2&linkId=81498e5cad35c98005d3f82966399925&tag=deathinthegar-20'>The Big Conservation Lie</a> in 2017, which details the problems in African conservation that stem from a racialized hero system that favors Western foreigners over Black Africans. These problems have deep taproots in Christian colonization, and continue to infiltrate the psyches of Africans as well as people in the West, perpetuated by narratives that suggest that philanthropy, conservation, and tourism are necessary to “protect” wild animals in Africa. Underlying these assumptions is that wildlife needs to be protected from Black African locals who have lived in equilibrium with this wildlife since humanity began. Meanwhile, white Westerners are encouraged to go on safaris all over Africa and kill big game animals for sport, yet there is no paramilitary outfits that will hunt and kill these foreigners, let alone burn down their villages, and disallow them from accessing their sacred forests as organizations such as WWF (World Wildlife Fund) have <a href='https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/wwf-atrocities-fortress-conservation-indigenous-peoples-un-a8823041.html'>done</a> alongside so many other multinational conservation organizations.</p> <p>A deeply complex issue, we dive into the intersections between conservation and food systems, the racist assumptions underpinning conservation in Africa, the Disney-fied myths that perpetuate problems in Western perception of