The Emotional Dimensions of Animal Disease Management: A Political Ecology Perspective for a Time of Heightened Biosecurity

Epstein, Kathleen; Essen, Erica von; Wilmer, Hailey

doi:10.3389/fhumd.2021.640119

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 76 publications

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“…The biosecurity rationale give license to culls in ways that hunters themselves are not always comfortable with (Epstein et al, 2021; Urner et al, 2021; von Essen and Redmalm, 2023b). Some declare it unnecessary or ‘dirty work’ (Emond et al, 2021), ‘labour’ (von Essen and Tickle, 2020) and a thankless job (Rippa, 2021) – in short, garbage management.…”

Section: Discussion: Legitimate and Illegitimate Interventions In Ur...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Natural born cullers? How hunters police the more-than-human right to the city

von Essen,

Redmalm

2023

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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Urban areas are a messy more-than-human interface for humans and synanthropic wildlife. Norms for what constitutes a ‘problem’ animal to be culled, a displaced animal to be rescued, or a species nuisance whom one simply has to let live, are undergoing rapid change. We investigate the changing expectations that municipal hunters experience that they have from society in relation to managing problem wildlife in cities. Adding to the literature on the constitution of ‘problem’ animals in human environments, we show what happens to these animals in the practical sense, and what informs this decision. Our point of departure is to ask by what rationales hunters consider lethal interventions in urban nature to be legitimate, and which they find to be morally problematic. In a discussion, we reflect on what this says about, and means for, multispecies coexistence. Through interviews and go-along participant observation with 32 municipal hunters in Sweden, we show how municipal hunters wrestle with growing unease about new custodial roles they are expected to inhabit, as facilitators of the natural order, as garbage collectors of society for unwanted wildlife, and as enforcers of an interspecies code of conduct for the city. Based on this analysis, we discuss the relative standing of reparative, sacrificial, aesthetic, goodwill, practical, categorical and situational rationales for culling. This paints a picture of hunters as more conflicted about their control of urban nature, in challenge with the stereotypical idea of the professional hunter as a ‘natural born culler’. It also shows a city of parallel planes of multispecies coexistence, where some species and animals get a pass more than others.

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Section: Discussion: Legitimate and Illegitimate Interventions In Ur...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Natural born cullers? How hunters police the more-than-human right to the city

von Essen,

Redmalm

2023

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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“…Social science scholarship on HWC recognizes fear as an important psycho-social dynamic influencing perceptions, values, attitudes, and behaviours toward wildlife (Houston et al 2010;Johansson et al 2012). Negative emotions like fear interact with socioecological dynamics across social and spatial scales, and influence individual and collective actions and identities related to resource governance (Sultana 2011;González-Hidalgo and Zografos 2020;Egge and Ajibade 2021;Epstein et al 2021). In the ecological literature, meanwhile, fear is often synonymous with "risk perception," referring to animals' capacity to perceive stimuli associated with threats such as predators, shaping risk avoidance behaviours (Lima and Dill 1990;Gaynor et al 2021).…”

Section: Fear Dynamics In Human-wolf-livestock Socioecological Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The socioecology of fear: A critical geographical consideration of human‐wolf‐livestock conflict

Anderson¹,

Charnley

Epstein

et al. 2022

Canadian Geographies / Géographies canadiennes

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Human-wolf-livestock coexistence efforts in Washington rely on sustaining wolves' fear of people, often described as "innate" even as it is reproduced through human-wolf interactions.• Mitigating wolf-livestock conflict requires managing human social norms, values, and assumptions about wolf behaviour that are interwoven with ecological fear dynamics. • Interdisciplinary dialogue between the social and biophysical sciences, inspired by critical physical geography, can enhance the study of socioecological processes, including human-wildlife conflict dynamics.Animal fear can be an important driver of ecological community structure: predators affect prey not only through predation, but also by inducing changes in behaviour and distribution-a phenomenon evocatively called the "ecology of fear." The return of wolves to the western United States is a notable instance of such dynamics, yet plays out in a complex socioecological system where efforts to mitigate impacts on livestock rely on manipulating wolves' fear of people. Examining Washington state's efforts to affect wolf behaviour to reduce livestock predation, we argue that this approach to coexistence with wolves is predicated on relations of fear: people, livestock, and wolves can arguably share landscapes with minimal conflict, as long as wolves are adequately afraid. We introduce the "socioecology of fear" as an interdisciplinary framework for examining the interwoven social and ecological processes of human-wildlife conflict management. Beyond frequently voiced ideas about wolves' "innate" fear, we examine how fear is (re)produced through human-wolf interactions and deeply shaped by human social processes. We contribute to the critical physical geography project by integrating critical social analysis with ecological theory, conducted through collaborative interdisciplinary dialogue. Such integrative practice is essential for understanding the complex challenges of managing wildlife in the Anthropocene.

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“…Reflecting this bottom-up biosecuritization, we use this text to outline an empirical research agenda around wild animal culling in urban and rural settings in times of biosecurity crises. To the latter, we include, in particular, anxieties over invasive alien species, but also over emerging wildlife diseases at the livestock-wildlife interface that now threaten whole industries (Epstein et al, 2021).…”

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confidence: 99%

License to Cull: A Research Agenda for Investigating the Necropolitics of Countryside Culling and Urban Pest Control

Essen

Redmalm

2023

Soc. Animals

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This paper proposes an empirical research agenda for investigating the practices of biosecuritization of wild animal threats in modern society. Previously mostly studied on the lofty biopolitical level of directives on combatting invasive species or culling pests, we outline the conceptual and methodological points of entry for bringing the on-the-ground work of culling out-of-place, unwanted, individual animals and populations. This means a focus on necropolitics as constituted by the norms, everyday professional practices, vernaculars of killing, and identity work by pest controllers in the city and hunters on the countryside. Borrowing from research in the domestic animal killing context, we nevertheless show how wild animal killing is imbued with more spontaneity, remorse, aesthetics, public stigma, and multispecies entanglements, requiring adapted research protocols.

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The Emotional Dimensions of Animal Disease Management: A Political Ecology Perspective for a Time of Heightened Biosecurity

Cited by 5 publications

References 76 publications

Natural born cullers? How hunters police the more-than-human right to the city

Natural born cullers? How hunters police the more-than-human right to the city

The socioecology of fear: A critical geographical consideration of human‐wolf‐livestock conflict

License to Cull: A Research Agenda for Investigating the Necropolitics of Countryside Culling and Urban Pest Control

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