An introduction to conservation conflicts

The conservation of biodiversity is an increasingly challenging endeavour. Current pressures from a growing human population have led to concerns of a sixth mass extinction event, bringing mounting pressure to find effective ways of conserving biodiversity (Barnosky et al., 2011). However, our ability to meet this challenge is affected by the fact that not everyone supports conservation objectives. People naturally have different interests and priorities, some of which may be diametrically opposed to conservation objectives. In some cases, these differences lead to damaging and costly conflicts that we see emerging across the world and which present major challenges to modern conservation (MacDonald and Service, 2007).