Between “Wild” and “Tame”: Placing Encounters with Sirocco the Kakapo Parrot in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Abstract

This article explores different dynamics and spatialities of nonhuman animal encounters to illuminate important intersections between place and human-animal relations. The article focuses on Sirocco the Kakapo, an endangered New Zealand parrot, who due to illness as a chick was hand-reared in isolation from other Kakapo. Informed by qualitative research, data was gathered through interviewing those involved in the Kakapo Recovery Programme and from Internet websites and publications featuring Sirocco. Based on this research, it can be demonstrated how Sirocco, unlike his fellow Kakapo, is a bird who can traverse the seemingly clear-cut and spatially inscribed boundaries between "wild" and "tame," between "human" and "animal," and between "wild" and "domestic" places. Drawing upon relational theories of space and place in human geography, the case of Sirocco is used to interrogate and inform theorizations concerning the place of nonhuman animals in both spatial and conceptual terms. Sirocco's story illuminates the complex and heterogeneous relations of encounter that stretch between New Zealand's wild and domestic places, which in turn rely upon particular notions of wild and tame and prescribed relations between humans and "wild animals" that inhere in conservation practice more broadly.