This book explores conservation practices on private land, based on
research conducted with landholders in the hinterlands of Melbourne,
Australia. It examines how conservation is pursued as an intimate
interaction between people and ecologies, suggesting that local
ecologies are lively participants in this process, rather than simply
the object of conservation, and that landholders develop their ideas of
environmental stewardship through this interaction. The book also
explores the consequences of private property as a form of spatial
organisation for conservation practice; the role of formative
interactions with ecologies in producing durable experiential knowledge;
how the possibilities for contemporary conservation practice are shaped
by historical landscape modification; and how landholders engage with
conservation covenants and payment schemes as part of their conservation
practice. The authors conclude with ideas on how goals and approaches to
private land conservation might be reframed amid calls for just social
and ecological outcomes in an era of rapid environmental change.