Community Focused Integration and Protected Areas Management in the Huascarán Biosphere Reserve, Peru

Integrating communities into conservation management has become a priority for national and international organizations concerned with natural resource management. Traditional conservation policies aimed to exclude local resource users by placing a boundary between the community and the area of interest, often in the form of national parks (Ascher 1995, Agrawal and Gibson 1999). Park management has often prioritized keeping local people out, following the view that human activities are incompatible with ecosystem conservation (Wells 2004). This “fortress” style of conservation has been heavily criticized as poor conservation outcomes following decades of intrusive resource management has forced policy makers to reconsider the role of community in conservation (Agrawal and Gibson 1999)