White Man's Game: Saving Animals, Rebuilding Eden, and Other Myths of Conservation in Africa by Stephanie Hanes | eBook

A probing examination of Western conservation efforts in Africa, where our feel-good stories belie a troubling reality

The stunningly beautiful Gorongosa National Park, once the crown jewel of Mozambique, was nearly destroyed by decades of civil war. It looked like a perfect place for Western philanthropy: revive the park and tourists would return, a win-win outcome for the environment and the impoverished villagers living in the area. So why did some researchers find the local communities actually getting hungrier, sicker, and poorer as the project went on? And why did efforts to bring back wildlife become far more difficult than expected?

In pursuit of answers, Stephanie Hanes takes readers on a vivid safari across southern Africa, from the shark-filled waters off Cape Agulhas to a reserve trying to save endangered wild dogs. She traces the tangled history of Western missionaries, explorers, and do-gooders in Africa, from Stanley and Livingstone to Teddy Roosevelt, from Bono and the Live Aid festivals to Greg Carr, the American benefactor of Gorongosa. And she examines the larger problems that arise when Westerners try to “fix” complex, messy situations in the developing world, acting with best intentions yet potentially overlooking the wishes of the people who live there. Beneath the uplifting stories we tell ourselves about helping Africans, she shows, often lies a dramatic misunderstanding of what the locals actually need and want.

A gripping narrative of environmentalists and insurgents, poachers and tycoons, elephants and angry spirits, White Man’s Game profoundly challenges the way we think about philanthropy and conservation.

Publishers Weekly

05/22/2017
Journalist Hanes advances a too-little-regarded position regarding philanthropic aid and conservation efforts in this forthright volume on Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park. For years, Hanes argues, well-meaning Westerners have launched ambitious conservation initiatives in developing countries, taking control of the narratives surrounding the places where they’ve become involved. Rarely, Hanes contends, do locals get a say. She examines this disconnect, dividing her analysis into three sections. The first looks at ways in which Africa has been discussed historically and “why we are still stuck in them.” Hanes traces Africa’s appeal to outsiders back to the late 18th century, when adventure-seeking Europeans made their way to what they dubbed “the Dark Continent.” In the modern era, fund-raising efforts such as Live Aid helped to perpetuate the idea that the continent “was poor, sympathetic, and in need of aid.” The second section focuses on Gorongosa itself. “Biologically and topographically diverse,” the park is “one of the best safari locations in southern Africa” and home to scores of vulnerable species. Hanes concludes by considering organizations such as National Geographic, whose travel-friendly depictions of the continent continue to obscure some of Africa’s true struggles. In straightforward and fervent prose, Hanes gives readers “a new way of thinking about nature, conservation, and the pitfalls of best intentions.” (July)

From the Publisher

“Powerful... A magnificent book.”
—The Wall Street Journal

“Brilliant… A page-turner rooted in investigative journalism.… Hanes resists cynicism throughout, sticking to her central question: Why do Western efforts to help the environment and Africa so often fail?”
—In These Times

“Necessary reading... White Man’s Game serves a vital purpose by strenuously and intelligently trying to uncouple the public relations campaigns of conservation organizations from their day-to-day effects on the lives of the people who actually live in the affected areas.... Hanes expertly surveys some of the long history of ‘do-gooder’ humanitarian interventions in Africa, from the days of Theodore Roosevelt to stories of Bono and LiveAid concerts, and she draws a tight web of connections between such condescending efforts and the modern multi-pronged struggle.”
—The Christian Science Monitor

“Hanes’s skepticism comes from deep research and far-ranging interviews. She writes gracefully and sympathetically, and regardless of whatever campaign emerges to discredit this book, a disquieting but hardly hostile work, she is fair and convincing. As this fine book shows, when it comes to Western interactions with Africa, meaning well is a necessary but far from sufficient condition.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Listening—carefully—to the stories others have to tell about their own lives is the key to working together. This book usefully reminds us how easily we can get caught up in our own narratives instead.”
—Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth

“Casting a skeptical eye on environmental pieties and plaster saints, Stephanie Hanes shows us the tragic quandary of conservation up close—that there are few solutions without vexing consequences, few plans that come without a price to be paid by those least able to afford it. The people directly affected by these grand schemes deserve to have their stories told in all their illuminating specificity, and White Man’s Game does a masterly job of it. Probing the often troubling implications of well-meaning Western aid projects, this lively and searching narrative exposes the weirdly messianic zeal of what is—or should be—a scientific discipline.”
—Caroline Fraser, author of Rewilding the World

“A fascinating look at the promise and perils of conservation efforts carried out by Westerners abroad. Stephanie Hanes makes a compelling case that the ‘real’ story of a project such as the restoration of Gorongosa National Park can only be told by including all narratives from all perspectives. With the background context filled in, it is clear that nothing, from the color of a helicopter to a gun salute for a dead elephant, is without multiple meanings. Hanes’s unusual ability to fully understand and empathize with varied viewpoints, plus her obvious love for nature and Gorongosa, elevate this history to a wonderful page-turner with deep insights for conservationists.”
—Emma Marris, author of Rambunctious Garden

Library Journal

06/15/2017
Christian Science Monitor foreign correspondent Hanes spent more than a year reporting on the effort to restore Gorongosa National Park, a reserve that once teemed with wildlife and tourists until it was destroyed during Mozambique's 15-year-long civil war. The park's restoration is the brainchild of Greg Carr, an American philanthropist who hopes to return the reserve to its former status as an ecological and tourist paradise and improve the lives of local Mozambicans in the process. While impressed with Carr's lofty goals, Hanes found significant discrepancies between the Carr Foundation's glowing progress reports about the restoration and the views of locals and academics she interviewed and events she witnessed. Behind the foundation's upbeat stories lurked some less appealing realities: angry locals, animal relocation failures, and growing political unrest in the region. Hanes concludes that the park is an ambitious but perhaps misguided project and a typical example of the Western world's tendency to hide the setbacks and miscalculations of African conservation programs instead of acknowledging them. VERDICT This insightful, well-written exposé should appeal to readers interested in the complexities underlying conservation agendas in Africa.—Cynthia Lee Knight, Hunterdon Cty. Historical Soc., Flemington, NJ

Kirkus Reviews

2017-05-15
In her sure-to-be-controversial first book, Christian Science Monitor correspondent Hanes investigates why so many Western-led conservation efforts in Africa go so wrong so often.The author's answers are not especially reassuring, nor are they intended to be. At the center of her story is the Gorongosa National Park in central Mozambique, a park that well-meaning Western businessman-turned-conservationist Greg Carr has championed for many years. Certainly Carr is no villain. He sees himself coming from a human rights-driven tradition, he is earnest in his desire to save African wildlife, and he has many admirers and supporters. However, earnestness, fawning admirers, and good intentions don't always guarantee positive outcomes. One of the author's central arguments is that Westerners tend to seize upon a single narrative strain when they engage in conservation efforts in Africa, ignoring other stories, including those that come from the voices of the local populations, who are most likely to face the unintended consequences of these efforts. Hanes chronicles many examples of Western interventions, especially in southern Africa, and shows how most of them have ended up falling far short of their goals. For all of its supporters' ambitions, the Gorongosa project is at best a mixed bag. It is telling that in recent months, as the author reveals in the afterword, an increasingly coordinated campaign of intimidation and disinformation emanating from Carr and his many well-connected allies has tried to fight this book's publication. Hanes falls short of posing her own solutions beyond recommending listening to other voices and narratives—a vitally important point, to be sure—but her skepticism comes from deep research and far-ranging interviews. She writes gracefully and sympathetically, and regardless of whatever campaign emerges to discredit this book, a disquieting but hardly hostile work, she is fair and convincing. As this fine book shows, when it comes to Western interactions with Africa, meaning well is a necessary but far from sufficient condition.

White Man's Game: Saving Animals, Rebuilding Eden, and Other Myths of Conservation in Africa

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