Conservation from a lens of anthropology

When mentioning conservation, what is the first scientific word occur in your mind, ecological monitoring, biodiversity modelling, or genetic evolution? Conservation is a biology-oriented research direction which focus on the conservation of animal species. Mascia et al (2003) proved that conservation and social science are interrelated.

Anthropology focuses on the relationship between human and species, targeting more on human in conservation. Goldman (2003) evaluated the situation of community-based conservation in Tanzania, he promoted to engage local people. Homewood (2012) assessed the economic status of pastoralists in east Africa and questioned the situation that wildlife revenues (e.g. from tourism) is not shared with these citizens by its government. Woodhouse (2012) examined the role of religion in conservation practice of Tibetan people and showed positive association between the two. These researchers all point new directions for conservation to integrate more broad knowledge and be more practical.

Not only these researchers give new thoughts to academic research, they also update research methodologies. Questionnaires and interviews are useful tools in anthropology. Yet in sensitive topics related to crime, what interviewees respond is not always turned out to be true. Nuno and John (2014) reviewed survey tools for asking questions about poaching, both advantages and disadvantages and suggested specific questionnaire techniques. Some of these methods basically use dice, beans and other tools to represent the answer to the questions.