Abstract

This talk focuses on an initiative in northern Kenya that aims to create space for conservation otherwise in a settler colonial stronghold dominated by private, fortress-style conservation arrangements. Political ecology has a long tradition of problematising the ways that conservation is marked by coloniality and perpetuates (neo)colonial violence – with a focus on land policies, political economies, and labour regimes underpinning conservation. There is now growing recognition of how certain species and ecological relations can be enrolled in these processes as well, motivating calls to decolonise ecology itself (Mabele et al. 2023). Drawing from engaged research embedded in a GEF -7 funded Inclusive Conservation Initiative project in the Mid-Ewaso Ng’iro, we reflect on renewed possibilities and persistent challenges of Indigenous-led efforts to conserve biodiversity without preserving settler ecologies. In discussing measures being used to unmake settler ecologies and restore pastoralist ecologies that could be more conducive to biodiversity, we place cultural keystone species in the spotlight, arguing that species of high cultural value for pastoralists may have a unique role to play in catalysing a shift towards ecologies otherwise.