Mardi Reardon-Smith, "Making Do: Conservation Ethics and Ecological Care in Australia" (Stanford UP, 2025)

Modern environmentalism often frames conservation as moral, humans damage nature, and conservation protects it. But Mardi Reardon-Smith’s Making Do: Conservation Ethics and Ecological Care in Australia, published by Stanford University Press in 2025, dismantles that comforting narrative and replaces it with something far more complex and candid. Set on the Cape York Peninsula, the book explores how Aboriginal traditional owners, pastoralists, conservation workers, and government institutions navigate landscapes shaped by colonialism, climate instability, species diversity, cattle grazing, fire, and ecological loss. What emerges is not a story of heroes versus villains but a portrait of people trying to “make do” within damaged systems. One of the book’s most provocative arguments is that care itself can be violent. Conservation often entails killing feral animals, managing landscapes by burning and fencing ecosystems, and deciding which species merit protection and which do not. Mardi challenges the romantic assumption that ecological care is inherently gentle or morally pure. Instead, care becomes a form of intervention, practical, political, and deeply contested. Perhaps most importantly, Making Do rejects the illusion that environmental crises can be neatly solved. Climate change, biodiversity collapse, and ecological instability have already irreversibly transformed the world. The challenge now is not to return to an imagined past but to learn how to build livable futures amid uncertainty. In a time when environmental discourse often swings between apocalyptic despair and technological optimism, Mardi offers a more grounded perspective. Ecological responsibility is imperfect, exhausting, and full of contradictions, yet it remains necessary. Amisah Bakuri (PhD) is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her research examines the intersections of religion, sexuality, gender, and migration, particularly within African diasporic communities in the Netherlands. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology