This paper analyses Wadi Araba - a scarcely populated district in the South of Jordan considered as one of the country’s ‘poverty pockets’ - as a laboratory for different, often competing development projects and practices. Focusing on the type of knowledge that forms the basis of interventions, the paper points out the ambivalence and intertwinement between techno-political forms of expertise and attempts to include local knowledge, especially in the field of nature conservation. Based on field research in Jordan since 2009, the paper shows how both forms of intervention and understandings of knowledge are intimately tied together, and how development practitioners frequently shift between them. It argues that this shift becomes particularly visible when institutional strategies change, or when the articulation of local knowledge does not conform to the wishes of project planners or does not yield the expected results. As Mosse points out, “what is read or presented as local knowledge (such as community needs, interests, priorities and plans) is a construct of the planning context, behind which is concealed a complex micro-politics of knowledge production and use” (Mosse 2004:19). As a case study, the paper draws on conflicts around the set-up and management of Protected Areas in Wadi Araba. In spite of numerous forms of participatory intervention and negotiation, there are strong movements in Wadi Araba against new proposed Protected Areas. Local opposition has already led to the cancellation of one of them and the questioning of others. This opposition resulted in the involved experts’ shifting positions from hailing participation to frustrations about the stubbornness and limited vision of the locals. It has also lead to internal discussions about the usefulness of participatory approaches. The paper argues that when local knowledge is not articulated according to plan, it is made invisible or bent to suit planning requirements rather than used as a base for rethinking strategies of intervention. However, participatory approaches and practices have developed dynamics that cannot entirely be discarded any more. They continue to provide a challenge to the resurfacing of techno-political conceptions of knowledge.