Paper short abstract:

This paper offers a manifesto for lively difference. It summons forth a multiplicity of biodiversities that need not recourse to Nature. It presents an interdisciplinary approach to wildlife that is open to the virtual. The potential, import and politics of this manifesto are critically examined.

Paper long abstract:

This paper offers a manifesto for lively difference. It aims to summon forth a multiplicity of biodiversities that need not recourse to modern understandings of Nature and its associated ontology, epistemology and politics. The paper links recent social science invocations of a vital materialism with parallel developments in conservation biology focusing on their shared interests in the diversity and dynamics of life and means to ensure their future flourishing. In the face of adversity wildlife management has tended to focus on the past and the preservation of pure, extant forms. In this paper I outline an alternative interdisciplinary approach to wildlife that is open to difference and the future virtual, in a Deleuzian sense. The paper presents the key components of this approach before reflecting on some of the frictions it engenders with powerful and prevalent forms of nonhuman biopolitics. The potential, import and politics of this manifesto are illustrated with reference to recent work on wilding in Europe and Asian elephant conservation in Sri Lanka.