Whether or not land should be set aside for nature conservation is a classic debate in conservation and environmental sciences as well as human and environmental geography — a classic debate because it remains the subject of intense argument more than a century after the development and formalization of protected areas as a global conservation strategy. For some people, nature protection is a story of human progress in managing and constraining rapacious human population growth and economic exploitation of nature. According to these perspectives, protected areas are not a powerful enough force in the world. There’s not enough support for parks, according to this line of thinking: too many parks exist only on “paper” and lack real enforcement, and more parks (with more resources) are what is needed to conserve biodiversity (see, for instance, the video by E.O. Wilson calling for half the Earth to be conserved in this week’s resources).

For other people, parks have been problematic at best, involving a huge expansion of state control over land and natural resources at the expense of the rights and livelihoods of local and indigenous resource users. According to these perspectives, the very premises of the park model are problematic: not only do parks often inappropriately supersede earlier claims on land, they provoke conflict with the people that necessarily continue to depend on the resources contained within parks ( timber, food, wildlife, and land itself). These livelihood and social tensions, according to such perspectives, imply that parks are necessarily an ineffective and inequitable model of conservation. These critiques have led to propositions for alternative park models, including community conservation models and peace parks. As you engage with the King (2009) article, try to think about the extent to which these models differ or are consistent with the more traditional national park model (alternatively called a 'command-and-control' or 'fortress conservation' approach).