I use qualitative methods to explore landscapes of conservation and preservation in pratice.  To witness these vital spaces,  I pay attention to the interacting cultures of nature, lived architectures, felt geographies, and myriad human/animal/plant encounters that gather together to compose unique ecologies of place and landscape. I am particularly interested in the emotional allegiances, ethical stances, and spatial practices that human beings direct towards endangered species, threatened ecosystems, and vulnerable architectures –– especially those that are afforded some degree of protection in Terrestrial/Marine/Coastal Protected Areas, tourism destinations, and historic districts.  My dissertation (in progress) is the product of fieldwork on Ocracoke Island and in the Cape Hatteras National Seashore in North Carolina’s Outer Banks;  this project uses a series of ethnographic vignettes to describe the representational and affective maneuvers involved in the territorialization of particular regimes for protecting animals, plants, places, cultural histories, and heritage architectures.