Ranchers, scientists, and grass-roots development in the United States and Kenya

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.