Abstract

How might overabundant ferns vitalize and pressure political ecologies of landscapes and wildlife conservation? This ethnographic article interrogates the relational worlds of humans, animals, and the fern species known as the 'bracken fern' (the Pteridium spp.) which thrives in and around a post-extraction iron-ore site in southern India. Forest officials have characterized the fern's slow "monopolization" of the Kudremukh National Park as threatening the area's celebrated biodiversity. Drawing on contemporary histories of the region's industrial past, on the proceedings of the Western Ghats Committee meetings, and the ongoing work of pteridologists and state forest department, the article analyses the ways in which the 'invasive' bracken fern's spatial dispersal, its proliferating tendency, and biophysical properties requires constant human efforts in controlling its spread. The article argues that resituating the fern's materiality, the anxieties its dispersal provokes, and the scientific studies highlighting its bioremediation potential reveals paradoxical challenges to normative practices of conservation which focus on fixed spatial zones. By doing so, I show how planning for conservation is a fraught process when the plant life in question is mobile and reflect on the need for new imaginaries of conservation practices in multispecies and industrial ecologies.

Keywords: ferns, industrial ecologies, biodiversity, conservation, political ecology, multispecies

How to Cite:

Nayak, P., (2026) “Ungovernable ferns and the horizons of conservation in late industrial ecologies”, Journal of Political Ecology 33(1): 6752. doi: https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.6752