LAUSR

ABSTRACT Zoological consultants in Western Australia survey northern quolls (a small, cat-like marsupial) for environmental impact assessment. Confronted by habitat destruction and on the verge of extinction, northern quolls are protected as a conservation significant species, yet their precarious ecological position is made visible only through zoological work. This article explores how consultative zoologists negotiate relationships between themselves and northern quolls in order to both craft detailed population studies and mobilise the species’ power to reframe human development. Traversing environmental legislation, zoologists nurture (rather than take for granted) quoll relations, manifesting an attentiveness that entangles the animal in fact-making and modes of environmental protection. Drawing from a growing compendium of multispecies scholarship, this article questions how attentiveness can bring new entanglements into being, and how these entanglements can be managed in order to both make sense of the world and level the playing field for those nonhumans who inhabit it.