Presentation short abstract

Drawing on multispecies ethnography of activist restoration at Princess Vlei, Cape Town, this paper proposes an approach to landscape restoration that is politically attuned to entangled histories, provides a path for just ecological futures, and reimagines who gets to determine biodiversity value.

Presentation long abstract

The implementation of restoration policies in local landscapes often frames conservation spaces as pristine and ignores the political, historical, and social life of threatened species. In Cape Town, South Africa the histories of extinctions are tightly entangled with histories of colonial and apartheid violence, however restoration policy does not go far enough to address these legacies, thus continuing an approach that is not politically sustainable and entrenches nature-society binaries. Using a case study of activist restoration at Princess Vlei, Cape Town, and drawing on multispecies ethnography conducted on the landscape, this paper draws on Haraway’s (2016) notion of “staying with the trouble” to propose an approach to landscape restoration that is politically attuned to entangled histories, provides a path for just ecological futures, and reimagines who gets to determine biodiversity value. This approach entails protesting degradation valuations by planting endangered species, advocating for the remediation of erased local plant ontologies, and, importantly, embracing ‘imperfect’ landscapes for restoration. Working with imperfect landscapes orients us away from the pristine and towards working with landscapes that have always been entangled with people. Here, histories risk de-politicisation as this land where forcibly removed people were dumped now sparks interest from conservationists and at some point, developers, prompting possible futures where people are once again locked out. Troubled landscapes therefore ask important questions about whose valuations matter and whose futures are accounted for. This work emphasises the entanglement of human and more-than-human well-being, not just as interrelationships, but as entangled histories, violences, and just futures.