Matt Watson

The concept of ‘peopled landscapes’ is based on the notion that it is not possible, nor socially or politically desirable, to remove people from the environment in the era of the Anthropocene. As such, it is necessary to document and develop ways to coexist and flourish. This review examines emergent scholarship about peopled landscapes and biodiversity conservation by considering invasive plant management and rewilding as social processes. While invasive plant management and rewilding are often understood as separate, thinking through social scientific research and examples from Australia and the UK, we demonstrate how both forms of human action in landscapes can be more usefully understood as social relations with nature involving social change and social action. Drawing attention to agency, practices and capacity, we show how diverse forms of human and nonhuman actions are recognised, attributed or acknowledged in biodiversity conservation in peopled landscapes. In practice, centring the idea of peopled landscapes (rather than conceiving of the environment as where the impact of people is minimised) shows how invasive plant management and rewilding can be understood as related responses to environmental problems. Flourishing and coexistence in peopled landscapes require recognition of the diverse human and nonhuman agencies that shape the politics of acceptable action, and illustrate the inseparability of environmental and social justice. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.