How international conservation groups are betraying indigenous peoples

Discrimination towards indigenous communities is rife among conservation groups and sometimes enforced at the barrel of a gun, says Curtis Abraham

THE murder of “guardian of the forest” Paulo Paulino Guajajara by armed loggers in the Brazilian Amazon reserve he called home garnered headlines around the world last month. It threw a spotlight on the contribution of indigenous communities to conserving ecosystems and biodiversity.

Too often, that contribution is overlooked and even belittled by the wider conservation movement. A default assumption is that indigenous rights conflict with the demands of conservation an attitude sometimes enforced at the barrel of a gun.

The past year, for example, saw evidence uncovered by Buzzfeed News that armed anti-poaching units working with the …