The Encroaching Forest: Struggles Over Land and Resources on the Boundary of Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda

Abstract

The expansion of outside, particularly state, control into rural areas through policies designed to protect and serve endangered wildlife has found increasing significance within studies on human–wildlife conflicts. This article expands the scope of these investigations by forwarding a case study from Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, in southwest Uganda, of a thriving protected area whose continued success has necessitated its expansion into privately owned land. I argue that such encroachment represents a new form of control, namely, through the dispossession of private property via conservation policies that not only restrict rural farmers from responding to incidents of crop raiding but also prevent local communities from accessing their own land.