Multispecies politics of wildlife conservation and management in urban and suburban landscapes of Northeastern U.S. and Western India
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Abstract
Over recent decades, Wildlife Conservation and Management (WCM) efforts have sought to address a continued decline of biodiversity around the globe. At the same time, many generalist species have increased their range and numbers through cohabitation in human-dominated areas, bringing humans and wild animals into more frequent contact and posing novel challenges for WCM. As urbanization increases, WCM does not solely take place in remote regions, free of humans and human influences. Instead, urban and suburban landscapes are sites of conservation and conflicts over how and what to conserve and manage. In these landscapes, efforts to conserve and protect wild animals can be highly contested. As such, the WCM community increasingly recognized that WCM policies are not solely based on the best ecological and scientific knowledge, but commonly driven by political processes. In this context, wild animals themselves influence the ecological, socioeconomic, and political processes that shape WCM policies.
This dissertation examines the politics of WCM in urban and suburban environments, exploring the role of emerging human and nonhuman actors in shaping WCM policies and practices. I do so by building on a literature review and two mixed-methods case studies in India and the United States (U.S.). The central findings from this research offer several important insights for WCM: 1) urban and suburban regions are key for present and future protection and conservation of biodiversity, 2) wild animals and other nonhumans are not only agents of socio-ecological changes, but have bearings on the social and political contexts in which WCM are made, eventually shaping these decisions, and 3) power dynamics and the political context are central to the formation of WCM decisions, actions, and outcomes. By laying bare the assumptions and constitutive power relations that shape WCM science and policies, the goal of this research is to provide insights for forms of political negotiation that are democratic and transparent to create the conditions for a more just approach to WCM for both humans and nonhumans.
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Attribution 4.0 International