In a world increasingly beleaguered by deforestation, pollution, global warming and other threats to the environment, we must take every possible step toward the conservation and sustainable management of our planet. Governments, environmental non-governmental organizations, and local communities must all work together in the pursuit of this common goal. Even with such cooperation, however, problems arise during the implementation of projects designed to protect land and resources used by local and indigenous communities. Many of these difficulties are caused by ideological conflicts between conservation organizations and the local communities with which they work, issues that appear repeatedly in the history of such interactions. In this thesis I explore the framework of conservation, including the role of governments, environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs), and local populations. This is followed by a history of the relationships between ENGOs and the local and indigenous communities with which they often collaborate. Finally, using a series of three case studies including one that I conducted in Monteverde, Costa Rica in the fall of 2006. I make suggestions as to how these relationships could be improved, ideally creating an interactive framework appropriate to the expansion and change that the field of conservation is experiencing in the 21st century.