Abstract

Two initiatives in community-based biodiversity conservation are examined. I describe key aspects of the formation in the mid 1990s of the Malpai Borderlands Group of the Southwest US, and the reorganisation of the Kenya Wildlife Service during 1994–6 and their legacies since then. I review how history, ownership, membership, and valuation were appealed to, created, maintained, and contested in defining what should be saved, by and for whom, and how in each. I also suggest the central role of science and relatively mundane technologies in co-ordinating these parameters. Success or 'best practice' as applied to the conjunction of biodiversity conservation and development depends upon this work in contesting and establishing history, ownership, membership and valuation.