In Remote Indonesia, Don’t Blame the Locals for Conservation Concerns

A conservation expert and his team challenged the notion that expert help from the outside is the only way to preserve some of the world’s most valuable and unique ecosystems. Three years later, he went back and documented what they were doing as a case study, which he and his co-authors recently published. The study addresses a conflict Douglas Sheil has seen before: professional conservation organizations saying they need to protect unique resource-rich lands, and locals not getting credit for already protecting the land and often getting blamed for not doing it right.