There are renewed global efforts to make wildlife conservation the foundation for broad-based economic development. This article looks at these tendencies in the ‘Kruger to Canyons’ (K2C) biosphere region in South Africa, encompassing the Kruger National Park and adjacent settlement areas and reserves. Various forms of the wildlife economy have a long history in this region. However, it is increasingly posited as a preternatural means for creating jobs. We chronicle the growth of the wildlife economy from its apartheid heyday to the present, showing its fundamental dependence on the ecological and political fragmentation of space. More generally, these biopolitical divisions are part of a broad contestation of wildlife value, organised around changing regimes of protected area enclosure and the spacing of human and non-human life. Despite recent claims by the South African conservation industry that it is demolishing fences and increasing habitat connectivity, political territorialisation and ecological fragmentation continue to be important means of securing profit and reducing perceived risk. While the contradictions of this dynamic have now become acute through the emergence of the rhino-poaching crisis, the growth of that violent industry, we conclude, should not be seen as the negative inversion of a legal wildlife economy. Instead, both the legal and the illegal wildlife economies are manifestations of the same underlying problems: ill-conceived attempts at agrarian reform; the persistent influence of an older veterinary wildlife assemblage; the continued role of the rural poor as an enabling but unacknowledged buffer between development and wildlife.

全球正在重新努力，使野生动物保护成为基础广泛的经济发展的基础。本文着眼于南非“克鲁格到峡谷”(K2C) 生物圈区域的这些趋势，包括克鲁格国家公园和邻近的定居区和保护区。各种形式的野生动物经济在该地区有着悠久的历史。然而，它越来越多地被视为创造就业机会的超自然手段。我们记录了野生动物经济从种族隔离鼎盛时期到现在的增长，表明其对空间生态和政治碎片化的根本依赖。更一般地说，这些生物政治分歧是野生动物价值广泛争论的一部分，围绕着不断变化的保护区圈地制度以及人类和非人类生活的间隔而组织。尽管南非保护行业最近声称它正在拆除围栏并增加栖息地连通性，但政治领土化和生态碎片化仍然是确保利润和降低感知风险的重要手段。虽然这种动态的矛盾现在因犀牛偷猎危机的出现而变得尖锐，但我们认为，这一暴力行业的增长不应被视为合法野生动物经济的倒置。相反，合法和非法的野生动物经济都表现出相同的潜在问题：土地改革的不当尝试；一个古老的兽医野生动物群落的持续影响；农村穷人作为发展与野生动植物之间的有利但未被承认的缓冲区的持续作用。