The Kruger Prism: Possibilities and Limitations of a National Park

The expansion of the national park model around the world has coincided with European colonialism, the displacement of indigenous populations, community-based initiatives, Western tourism, economic neoliberalism, and the implementation of global conservation agendas. During all these critical moments, South Africa’s Kruger National Park has served as prism for the challenges of balancing biodiversity conservation with socioeconomic development. This article uses Kruger as a case study to engage with three thematic tensions with the national park model. Specifically, I examine the tensions between wildlife and consumption, inclusion and exclusion, and green militarization and peace parks. Although these features are specific to Kruger, they have parallels with other national parks around the world because they are emblematic of the possibilities and limitations of this spatial approach to biodiversity conservation. Based on twenty years of field work in South Africa, coupled with more than a dozen ethnographic visits to Kruger National Park, interviews with park officials, and archival research, this article traces the trajectory of conservation in this setting while considering its varied social and ecological impacts for the wildlife, conservation spaces, and people that live with them.