LAUSR

Abstract This article focuses on the politics of environmental conservation in the UN Buffer Zone (BZ) that divides the island of Cyprus. On the one hand, it underscores the unintended conservation benefits which resulted after the violent depopulation of the BZ. On the other hand, it shows how the protracted conflict and its transformation into a post-violent one, has ‘softened up’ the BZ, and gave rise to new demands for human access and land development. The BZ as a spatial legacy of the Cyprus conflict thus illustrates the paradoxes of conservation practices in unintended ecological zones, which we term collateral conservation. It also underscores the modi vivendi negotiated among a broadened range of actors in pursuit of rival anthropocentric or ecological goals.