Conservation and Invasive Alien Species: Violent Love 435 such violence in conservation discourse and practice The social formation of conservation has the raison d’être of caring for and protecting nonhuman nature This chapter asks how such violent practices are considered acceptable in the conservationist space of care, and even encouraged, as an ethical response to the presence of certain organisms in a region The chapter first offers a brief overview of conservationist definitions, discourse, and practice relating to IAS We then present the case of rabbits in Australia to illustrate the nature of the problematic practices that are entailed in the conservationist management of IAS Following this, we draw on Michel Foucault’s work on biopower (2003, 2008, 2009) to explain and respond to the complicated manners in which conservation becomes infused with discourses and practices of violence In deploying the biopolitical analytical lens, the chapter demonstrates the role of collective ontologies such as ecosystem, biodiversity, and species in rendering invisible the individual organisms that are the targets of conservationist action on IAS It argues that an ecocentric approach that focuses on the collectivity not only results in the intertwining of care and harm in conservation but also enables the juggling of competing agendas relating to human socio-economic interests, on the one hand, and the protection of nonhuman nature, on the other The chapter then further problematises the abusive management generated by the category of IAS It does so by highlighting the socially constructed character of this category By bringing together the biopolitical analysis with literatures in geography and environmental philosophy, we highlight the politically charged nature of the ‘invasive alien’ classification, thereby opening opportunities for contesting the resulting abuse The chapter draws on material from intergovernmental conservation policy instruments such as the Convention on Biological Diversity and from documents generated by conservation groups in order to illustrate its arguments Defining and Managing Invasive Alien Species The CBD describes invasive alien species as ‘species whose introduction and/ or spread outside their natural past or present distribution threatens biological diversity’ (Convention on Biological Species 2015b) Alien species are defined in relation to ‘native species’ ‘Native’ refers to organisms that in ‘a given territory…[have] been observed in the form of a naturally occurring and self-sustaining population in historical times’ (Convention on Biological Species 2015a) By contrast, the term ‘alien species’ refers to those organisms