As one of the pioneer sites of Integrated Conservation and Development (ICD) programs, Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in southwestern Uganda stands as a flagship for community conservation ideals. Replacing the older and failing ideology of fortress conservation, which excluded local communities from national parks and from using park resources, ICD programs aim to link community benefits with conservation efforts through community development programs. Poverty, land hunger, and a sense of injustice towards the imposition of the park remain the biggest challenges facing communities around Bwindi and therefore form the largest obstacles to conservation efforts in the region. The various ICD programs enacted around Bwindi since the late 1980's attempt to address some of these issues but the extent to which these programs have been effective in establishing positive attitudes towards the park remains questionable. Based on a year of ethnographic fieldwork, this research contributes to an increasing body of critical scholarship on community conservation by arguing that rather than offering an opportunity to raze the 'fort' of traditional fortress conservation policies, ICDs reproduce or reconstruct old structures of exclusion and hollow claims of accountability to local people. In sad irony, 'new' relations between people and parks created under the ICDs look very much like the old structures of exploitation and exclusion that these programs identified as the chief barriers to effective conservation, and which these programs were intended in theory to replace. Specifically, ICD programs fail to change the traditional system of conservation based on donor aid, foreign ownership, and local dependency. Acquiescence to foreign donors becomes paramount over local needs. By framing conservation efforts in the language of participation and community, the actual impact of ICDs on local welfare is shrouded behind a green veil. Findings from this study argue that the real danger to local communities lies not in what ICDs have failed to accomplish, but rather, in the very strength of their promises and their successes they have created a new landscape of inequality, exploitation, vulnerability, and violence.
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