Vol. 7 · No. 1 · 2003

Reed L. Wadley

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The dominant model of biodiversity conservation today centres on co-management, or collaborative management of natural resources between local communities that often rely on those resources, and outside conservation authorities.A prevailing assumption of co-management has been that local management can lead to more sustainable resource use and thus better conservation of biodiversity (cf. Smith and Wishnie 2000). Concerns of equity also figure into co-management, in order that locals can maintain some control and use of resources that might otherwise be alienated from them under more draconian conservation policies. In trying to make co-management work, one important pre-condition is for outside managers to have a good understanding of how locals actually use and manage their resources.