Conservation has different meanings for different people. For some it implies the exclusion of humans from protected natural reserves, and for others, the protection of threatened species or habitats in ecosystems that are already occupied or exploited by human populations. The impracticability, as well as the controversial ethics, of giving human needs second place to those of ‘nature’, has suggested to some writers the need for a multi-purpose strategy which not merely reconciles the sometimes contradictory demands of humans and nature conservation, but goes further to integrate the economic and conservationary management of the same habitats. In urbanised and industrialised Europe, such ideas have far-reaching implications (Adams 1996).

In dryland Africa, conservation thinking has two tributary traditions. The first is the demand, emanating from conservation lobbies in northern countries and tourism ministries of African governments, for protected reserves – protected, that is, from Africans. The drylands contain most of Africa's best known tourist game parks, and tourism is a major earner of foreign exchange in several national economies. The second is the soil conservation movement, which, having its historical roots in the USA in the 1920s and 1930s, became influential in colonial governments in the 1940s and 1950s (Anderson 1984; Huxley 1937; Stocking 1996). The thrust of soil conservation propaganda, particularly in its early years, was that African smallholders were recklessly destroying their natural resources by inappropriate land use practices.