Paper short abstract:

Environmental assessments carried out under private contact (that might fail to notice certain forms of life) contrast with practices of indigenous ranger teams whose internal collaborations (traditional ecological knowledge plus sciences) increase the reliability of expertise.

Paper long abstract:

What goes unnoticed in country can be the result of the kind of wilful neglect that has atopia as its desired political outcome. Placelessness then allows for a generalised and reduced materiality: to micro-chemical matter that can be extracted and to macro structures for engineering. But it is at the meso-level (Stengers) that lively beings respond to each other's agencies with specific modes of attention. These are arts and skills practised for life-enhancement.

As Indigenous ranger programmes are expanding in number, the collaborations involved are also transforming the sciences' ways of paying attention to country. This paper contrasts the kinds of environmental assessments carried out under private contact (that might fail to notice certain forms of life) with the ranger teams whose internal collaborations (traditional ecological knowledge plus sciences) have effects that increase the reliability of knowledge by extending forms of expertise.