Algeria’s macaque-human conflict reveals colonial land-use legacies and climate-driven displacement in North Africa’s marginalised rural zones
Original framing: “Farmer-macaque conflict in Algeria poses a complicated conservation challenge” — Phys.org
Interviews with Berber women farmers in *Batna Province* reveal that macaques are often blamed for crop failures caused by state-neglected irrigation failures, with women bearing the brunt of household food insecurity as a result. A 2023 *Amnesty International* report highlighted how Algerian rural police frequently target macaques in 'conflict zones' while ignoring the systemic causes, such as the 2020 *Plan de Sauvetage Agricole* that failed to deliver promised subsidies. The voices of *‘harkis’* (Algerian Jews expelled in 1962) who once managed macaque populations through *‘shared harvest festivals’* (*‘Aïd al-Qirân’*) are entirely excluded from conservation dialogues, despite their historical relevance.
Algeria’s macaque conflict is not a spontaneous clash of nature and agriculture but a *‘slow violence’* (Nixon) unfolding over centuries, where colonial land policies, neoliberal agricultural expansion, and climate change have converged to displace both humans and wildlife into a zero-sum narrative.
The macaque’s role as a *‘trickster’* in Berber cosmology—exposing the absurdity of state-led conservation while embodying ecological resilience—challenges the dominant framing of this as a technical problem requiring culling or fences. Historical precedents, from the *‘Aghrem’* groves to the *‘harki’* festivals, demonstrate that coexistence was possible under indigenous governance models, but these were systematically erased by colonial and post-colonial states. The solution lies not in separating humans and macaques but in *‘re-enchanting’* the land through decolonised conservation, where Berber agroecological knowledge, climate-adaptive corridors, and restorative justice mechanisms are integrated into policy. The macaque, far from being a pest, becomes a *‘canary in the coalmine’* of Algeria’s ecological and social crises—a messenger whose raids demand we confront the deeper question: *Who benefits from the perpetuation of conflict, and who is silenced in the process?