Over time, the peoples living in Latin America’s diverse landscapes have developed complex and varied ways of understanding the world around them. For much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the main goal of the sciences was to keep Latin America’s “prodigal” landscapes as productive as possible. Since the mid-twentieth century, a new countercurrent has emerged, which focuses on using science to conserve biological diversity, and to promote sustainability.

This article argues in favour of “audacity”: employing the practice of history fully to tell a complex story involving conservation science.