Under Construction: Reproducing Colonial Landscape Perspectives in Natural Resource Management of Public Reserves

The values and land use preferences deemed legitimate in natural resource management are not neutral—they are circumscribed by inherited colonial structures that determine which landscape perspectives carry weight in public decision-making processes. This paper examines a land swap between a private developer and a local council in the coastal township of Indented Head, Victoria, Australia, which led to the creation of the Indented Head Woodland Nature Reserve on Wadawurrung Country. Drawing on council documentation, public consultation records, and media sources, the paper traces the landscape perspectives mobilised by stakeholders in relation to both the Reserve and the adjacent area known as ‘the Paddock’. The values that gained traction—native species protection, ecological preservation, and loosely defined Indigenous cultural heritage—were those constructed within normative Western environmental frameworks. Conspicuously absent were landscape perspectives reflecting documented historical uses of both spaces, including bike riding, dog walking, tree climbing, and orchid harvesting. Building on Colvin et al.’s (2020) application of the term ‘usual suspects’ to capture the powerful stakeholders engaged in natural resource management debates, this paper proposes that landscape perspectives themselves—distinct from the stakeholders who deploy them—can function as the ‘usual suspects’. Such perspectives assume the separability of nature and society, deeming intimate entwinement of human activity in natural spaces illegible, and incorporating First Nations Peoples within the category of ‘natural’. The paper argues that naming and unsettling these frameworks is a necessary precondition for natural resource management that moves beyond the reproduction of colonial dispossession. Colonial frameworks circumscribe which landscape perspectives are legible in natural resource management. Landscape perspectives themselves, not only powerful stakeholders, can function as ‘usual suspects’. The dominant framework assumes the separability of nature and society. Diverse stakeholders mobilise shared landscape perspectives to defend historical or preferred land uses. Case study demonstrates illegibility of documented historical land uses—e.g. orchid harvesting, bike riding—within normative public land management.