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• Forestry science in the DRC exemplifies the epistemic continuity of Extractivism; • From timber to carbon, forest commodification rearticulates distal claims to local ecologies. • We introduce the concept of intraction , the spatial immobilization of nature. The forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are increasingly hailed as a “solution” to climate change, positioned within global climate governance as sites of carbon sequestration and climate finance. This framing extends a longer history in which scientific knowledge has rendered these forests legible as resources for accumulation: throughout the 20th century, forestry science promoted Congo’s forests as commercial timber reserves, facilitating an export-oriented industry largely shaped by foreign capital and colonial epistemologies. As avoided-deforestation schemes and carbon markets are attracting attention from researchers and investors alike, interrogating how knowledge practices have historically mediated forest commodification becomes essential for understanding the political economies underpinning contemporary climate interventions. Informed by Extractivism, we introduce the concept of intraction – the immobilization of natural resources for profit – to trace continuities between colonial logging regimes and present-day carbon offset initiatives. Drawing from archival records (n = 249), interviews (n = 15), and scientific publications (n = 51), we examine whose knowledge shapes forest governance, who benefits, and for what purposes. Our findings reveal that forestry science has consistently operated as an infrastructure of valuation, first enabling timber extraction and now facilitating carbon commodification. Timber extraction removed matter from place, while carbon markets now lock them in situ ; yet, both forms of governance sustain distal societies while silencing local actors – particularly forest-dependent communities. The concept of intraction thus illuminates how contemporary climate governance reproduces historical power asymmetries, demonstrating that the shift from timber to carbon marks not a rupture, but a reconfiguration of extractive relations.