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Conservation area management schemes in the province of North Cameroon have often ignored the relationships that exist between the neighbouring populations and natural resources, or even destroyed them in initiatives for development and conservation. The resources management approach implemented is too harsh, even if well intentioned. It is poor at properly involving deprived populations, people who nevertheless have traditionally kept up close and long-held relations with their immediate environment, often deriving from such protected areas the means of subsistence vital for their survival. Questioning and upheaval of these relations threatens these societies and their essential activities.