1 Conservation as Cultural and Political Practice

has conducted ethnographic research in the Karakoram mountains of northern Pakistan, most recently investigating the impact of conservation interventions by international NGOs on localized environmental ideologies. Thirty-three years ago the Evangelical Sisters of Mary, a Catholic order in Pheonix, Arizona, donated three plaques to the Grand Canyon National Park. These plaques quoted Biblical psalms extolling the glory of God and his creations, including presumably the Grand Canyon. For three decades, they hung outside the gift shop and on a lookout tower overlooking the south rim of the canyon. In 2003, however, a park visitor approached the American Civil Liberties Union, which subsequently queried the Park Service about the constitutional appropriateness of the plaques and they were taken down. A protest emerged from the Christian right, including so-called ‘creation scientists’, and the plaques were rehung. The Park Service is currently awaiting a decision from the Department of Justice before taking any further action (Figure 1). While this debate may seem trivial and local, it is anything but. Despite decades of under-funding and consequent neglect of Grand Canyon National Park, this ‘non-natural