Sanderson & Redford's (2003) correct insistence that poverty alleviation programmes ought more actively to include conservation would be well matched by an awareness of the impacts of some conservation policies, particularly the establishment of strictly protected areas, on local livelihoods. Lands protected as wilderness require the removal or exclusion of people and are locally costly. Wilderness protection requires, we argue, far more awareness of the nature and extent of these costs wherever conservation interests have to be served by people's absence.