ABSTRACT
The successful prosecution of enspirited sacred natural sites for conservation goals and biocultural enhancement is contingent upon a number of factors. These factors include a pluriversal legal framework, a polycentric worldview, institutional support, advocacy and judicial traction, an intercultural approach, and the optimisation of local lay support for the ritual protection of sacred natural sites (SNS). In order for the juristic personhood of sacred natural sites to become normative, there is a need for advocacy groups or environmental lawyers to help Indigenous people with test cases to secure standing for threatened SNS. Hopefully, this will lead to judicial traction, resulting in a critical mass where courts increasingly find in favour of other-than-human entities that are threatened. Lay participation in ritual protection of enspirited SNS has not been fully recognised in much of the widely quoted literature or in conservation planning to date.
