InstitutionClaim Cited
Navajo livestock reduction
Federal officials translated Diné land, animals, and households into sheep-unit carrying-capacity targets, then used purchases, slaughter, districts, permits, and enforcement to reduce herds. Range deterioration was real and multicausal, but the program displaced Diné authority and knowledge, especially women's ownership, while leaving a permit system that Navajo institutions and land users still have to govern.
What happens when an outside conservation bureaucracy can count a people's animals but cannot be governed by the relationships those animals sustain?