Abstract

In the context of socio-ecological and climate crises, the global challenges for biodiversity conservation are enormous. These challenges are addressed through a range of conservation regulations, programs, and initiatives stemming from both the public and private sectors. This perspective proposes focusing on the "pluriverses of conservation", understood as the diverse modes of attention and care deployed among different entities in a more-than-human world. We believe these caring relationships are expressed with vitality in interactions between conservation organizations and both human and non-human communities in places undergoing critical dynamics of capitalist transformation. We recognize that forests, fungi, mammals, birds, insects, lichens and other entities are not reducible solely to the field of conservation. Nonetheless, conservation offers a privileged advantage to investigate an epistemological shift-from modes of knowing (epistemologies) toward modes of existing (ontologies)-and, from there, to modes of attention toward more-than-humans inspiring current conservation processes in many parts of the world. Drawing on posthumanist theories, transdisciplinary methodologies, and long-term ethnographic research in the Southern Cone of South America, the article introduces the Transdisciplinary Field Laboratories-experiential spaces where diverse knowledges and practices intersect to foster multispecies relationships and innovative conservation approaches. These laboratories exemplify how conservation initiatives can challenge anthropocentric perspectives, opening pathways toward alternative socio-ecological futures grounded in multispecies justice. We argue that such modes of coexistence and care, facilitated through these collaborative spaces, embody alternative ways of relating to biodiversity beyond dominant Western paradigms, ultimately contributing to more inclusive, just, and sustainable approaches to conservation.