Birding for nature conservation becomes violent in war when foreign states and industry use it to extract value from countries like Iraq. In wartime Iraq, birding became a pathway to multinational resource extraction by producing “eco-value,” a form of economic value for species life and, by extension, the ecosystems they inhabit. Iraqi marshland conservationists, including private contractors, produced eco-value in the context of extreme violence for the purposes of environmental rehabilitation. This eco-value was then leveraged to mine natural resources that were embedded in the same geological field. Compounding the violence of extraction was the violence conservation introduced for Iraqi citizens who alone performed the dangerous labor of birding; they were recruited to do this in order to safeguard the lives of foreign experts, who did not travel to the marshes of Iraq. The result was a form of nature conservation that made Iraqi lives uniquely expendable in the project of building the occupation's lifeforce.

中文翻译：

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炮火下观鸟

当外国和工业界利用自然保护观鸟从伊拉克等国家获取价值时，在战争中就会变得暴力。在战时的伊拉克，观鸟通过产生“生态价值”成为跨国资源开采的途径，“生态价值”是物种生命及其所栖息的生态系统的一种经济价值。包括私人承包商在内的伊拉克沼泽地保护主义者在极端暴力的背景下创造了生态价值，以恢复环境。然后利用这种生态价值来开采同一地质场中的自然资源。使采伐的暴力雪上加霜的是，对独自从事危险的观鸟劳动的伊拉克公民实行了暴力保护。他们被招募来做这件事是为了保护没有前往伊拉克沼泽的外国专家的生命。其结果是一种自然保护形式，使伊拉克人的生命在建设占领者生命力的项目中成为独特的牺牲品。