On Friday November 4th, Riley Ravary gave a talk titled, “Impacts of Transboundary Protected Areas Governance on Gender at Mount Elgon National Park” for the Social Change and Development in Africa Working Group. Ravary is a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at UF. Her talk focused on the experiences of residents within or near a transboundary protected area that lies between Uganda and Kenya, through gender, conservation, and governance frameworks.
In June 2016, Ravary conducted 68 semi-structured interviews and engaged in participant observation within two communities, Sipi and Bududa, in Uganda. Through this preliminary research, Ravary has identified a number of areas of potential future exploration. First, there is a significant disconnect between communities and the park rangers due to communication gaps, a short and tumultuous history of the park, and the practice of paying bribes to access the park. In Sipi, community members had different understandings about whether or not it was legal to collect firewood from within the park and, if legal, on what days the park was open to access. In Bududa the residents were more certain that it was illegal to go in the park to collect firewood. In both communities, bribes were still routinely paid for access to the park. Second, men and women experience different risks in relation to the park, park rules, and park rangers. Overall, there is a theme of violence as a consequence of resource extraction from the park but men and women experience that violence in different ways. Third, the rules surrounding the park appear to be flexible in relation to campaign periods, where local politicians promise and sometimes allow increased access rights for grazing, farming, and extraction of firewood and medicinal plants.