Presentation short abstract

This research shows how consulting firms have become key actors in conservation governance, demonstrating how private expertise mediates between extraction and species protection by stabilizing competing ecological, legal, and political realities

Presentation long abstract

Consulting firms are playing an increasingly significant, albeit overlooked, role in the administration of global conservation goals. Existing research suggests their rise can be seen as part of the broader project of neoliberal deregulation and declining state capacity, which have pushed governments to outsource responsibilities to private actors with specialized market-based expertise. Labeling the consultification of conservation governance as another iteration of the neoliberal natures paradigm, however, risks overlooking the fact that third-party involvement in conservation decision-making functionally predates mainstream deregulatory reforms. In this paper, I argue that rather than being driven solely by state retreat, the turn to private consultants was fueled by a need for a particular kind of expertise capable of meshing the extension of legal protections for more-than-human life with the extractive status quo. Centering the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) as a case study, I draw on government archives, industry publications, and interviews with practitioners to document the rise and spread of consulting firms as key actors in reconciling resource extraction with conservation law. I interrogate the function and character of consultant involvement in contested ESA decisions and identify private expertise as a critical agent in balancing and singularizing the multiple and competing ontological realities necessary to render extraction legally defensible. This work highlights the importance of examining the origins of seemingly novel conservation actors and calls for greater attention to the political materiality of expertise in shaping compromises, power relations, and conservation futures at the interface of extraction and ecological protection.