by John Mbaria & Mordecai Ogada

Conservation in Africa has a long and troubling history, born from a European desire to control land and wildlife to maintain their hunting habitats. The conservation industry in Africa remains one that perpetuates colonialism and has failed animals and the indigenous communities that live among them. 

If you care about animals and biodiversity, you need to read this book. John Mbaria and Mordecai Ogada explore the corruption that plagues conservation in Africa and why it has failed wildlife and local communities. Many of the wildlife agencies that operate in Africa do so under the guise of animal protection, but in fact allow trophy hunters to decimate wildlife populations, while alienating Indigenous communities. What separates the hunter from the poacher is race, and this book provides a critique of fortress conservation and green militarization. If we want to save animals we need to change tactics, colonial models of conservation are falling us and need to be changed.

Title: The Big Conservation Lie

Authors: John Mbaria & Mordecai Ogada

ISBN: 978-0692787212

Publisher: Lens&Pens Publishing 

John Mbaria an award-winning Kenyan journalist who has written and investigated wildlife conservation since 2000. 

Mordecai Ogada is a carnivore ecologist who has been involved with conservation in Kenya for almost 20 Years. He works on human-wildlife conflict and carnivore conservation.

Abdourahamane Ly, guest curator for Veganuary at Global Literature in Libraries Initiative. He has been vegan for the past seven years. He is extremely passionate about animal rights and encouraging more humans, especially Africans, to go vegan. He was born in Guinea in West Africa but spent the last 13 years in China. He is currently in Rwanda spreading the vegan message. You can follow him on Instagram at @fulanivegan and X at @fulanivegan.