Before the Conservation Fix: Ecological Displacement and the Making of Nature as Regulatory Subject
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DiSilvestro, Adriana Maria. “Before the Conservation Fix: Ecological Displacement and the Making of Nature as Regulatory Subject.” Antipode, October 21, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.70082.
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This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: DiSilvestro, Adriana Maria. “Before the Conservation Fix: Ecological Displacement and the Making of Nature as Regulatory Subject.” Antipode, October 21, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.70082., which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.70082. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions. This article may not be enhanced, enriched or otherwise transformed into a derivative work, without express permission from Wiley or by statutory rights under applicable legislation. Copyright notices must not be removed, obscured or modified. The article must be linked to Wiley’s version of record on Wiley Online Library and any embedding, framing or otherwise making available the article or pages thereof by third parties from platforms, services and websites other than Wiley Online Library must be prohibited.
Abstract
Liberal states must reconcile extraction-driven economic growth with environmental protection. While literature on environmental fixes documents how conservation measures can ease this tension, it has yet to fully explore the conditions, which normalise the transformation of overexploitation into an ecological, rather than economic, problem. Using the entanglement of British Columbia's wolf cull, resource industries and endangered caribou as a case study, I draw from conservation archives, economic data and theories of liberal environmental governance to show how balancing calls for both extraction and environmental protection allows for the state to engage in ‘ecological displacement’, where regulation is shifted from economy to ecology. Further, I argue that this displacement is dependent on pre-existing domination of animal life. These findings suggest that understanding the proliferation of what geographers call conservation fixes requires engagement with conditions of the liberal state that make lethal ecological intervention more available than regulation of extractive interests.