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Wanted and Unwanted Nature: Invasive Plants and the Alien–Native Dichotomy

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Wanted and Unwanted Nature: Invasive Plants and the Alien–Native Dichotomy Marte Qvenild Wanted and unwanted nature: Invasive plants and the alien–native dichotomy Thesis for the degree of Philosophiae Doctor Trondheim, May 2013 Norwegian University of Science and Technology Faculty of Social Sciences and Technology Management Department of Geography NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology Thesis for the degree of Philosophiae Doctor Faculty of Social Sciences and Technology Management Department of Geography © Marte Qvenild ISBN 978-82-471-4410-7 (printed ver.) ISBN 978-82-471-4411-4(electronic ver.) ISSN 1503-8181 Doctoral theses at NTNU, 2013:152 Printed by NTNU-trykk Acknowledgements This thesis has been submitted as part of the fulfillment of the doctoral degree Philosophiae Doctor (Ph.D.) at The Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Department of Geography. The Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA) has enabled this study as employer through the Strategic Institute Program (SIP) ‘Research Tools for the Management of biodiversity to meet the 2010 objectives’ co-funded by The Research Council of Norway and NINA. The aim of the SIP has been to contribute towards improved management of biological diversity. The present study would not have been possible without generous and open-hearted interviewees; thanks to the welcoming garden owners in Oppland who let me into their homes and gardens to share their thoughts and reflections. At Fornebu, I would like to thank all the interviewees who took the time to ‘walk me through’ their stories and the reconstructed landscape of the closed-down airport. Moreover, I thank Statsbygg and Bjørbekk & Lindheim for giving me access to their archives on the Fornebu project. There have been several people of key importance enabeling me to undertake this work; First and foremost, my main supervisor Gunhild Setten, Associate Professor at the Department of Geography at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and co-supervisor, Margrete Skår, senior researcher at NINA, have been skilled and dedicated ’midwives’ during the conception of this thesis. They have been critical and constructive commentators and readers as well as patient inspirators and motivators. I am convinced that working with the two of you has made me a better writer and researcher. Moreover, thanks for a stimulating collaboration while co-authoring the paper ’Politicising plants: dwelling and invasive alien species in domestic gardens’. I hope we will get the opportunity to work and write together again. Moreover, I would like to thank my employer NINA for giving me the opportunity to undertake this work, and my colleagues at Lillehammer and Oslo for support and discussions. A special gratitude goes to the research managers Børre Dervo, Jostein Skurdal and Erik Framstad for giving me the flexibility, support and administrative adjustments to undertake and finalise this thesis. 3 Morten Bergan, Anders Often (NINA), Arnstein Staverløkk (NINA), Helen Fredholm and Aud Berit Fjordheim have given me access to their photos to illustrate my work while Stein Ivar Johnsen (NINA) and Kari Sivertsen (NINA) have made maps for both of my case studies and papers. Many thanks to all of you for your help! I further direct a special thank you to Tore Qvenild for helping me with literature on the history of species introductions and management in Norway. Thanks to Marit Vestvik, Knut Fageraas, Maiken Bjørkan, Hilde Nymoen Rørtveit, Tore Qvenild, Odd Terje Sandlund, Jostein Skurdal and Bjørn Kaltenborn for reading and commenting on different parts my work, for stimulating discussions and for encouragement. Thanks to Catriona Turner for a thorough proof reading of the thesis. I also thank Katrina Rønningen who gave excellent comments and inputs as ‘opponent’ at the final seminar. This stimulated important discussions in the final stages of the writing process. I am grateful for all the help and support from my parents, Bergljot and Tore, my sister Synne and brother Arne, as well as my in-laws Grethe, Per, Espen, Johanne and Jon. I am especially thankful to Bergljot and Grethe for babysitting Isak in very hectic and demanding times, and to Bergljot and Tore for numerous late night conversations that has motivated me throughout this period. Finally I would like to thank my dear husband Truls for being so supportive, flexible, encouraging and patient throughout this time. You and Isak have made my life so much brighter by keeping me ‘grounded’ and by encouraging me during the most intense work periods. 4 Abstract This thesis explores how plants are perceived and categorised as alien, invasive and native respectively at individual, professional, and political levels. The thesis demonstrates how perceptions of and interactions with plants happen in ways that do not always correspond to the environmental authorities definitions of alienness and nativeness. As alienness and nativeness are concepts that are spatiotemporal in character, the labelling of plants as alien or native often involve value-laden discussions over belonging, as well as demarcations of wanted from unwanted nature. The questions this thesis seeks to address, in essence, are the following; how are alienness, invasiveness and nativeness perceived and expressed at individual, professional, and political levels? And, how is the categorisation of invasive alien species, as applied by the environmental management sector, perceived at individual and professional levels? Empirically, the thesis is based on two qualitative case studies: (1) a study of individual domestic gardeners in selected locations in the county of Oppland, Norway; and (2) a study of professionals, namely planners, landscape architects and environmentalists, and their disagreements over what plants to categorise as alien or native at the time when the former airport of Fornebu, in Oslo, was developed into a site for recreation, housing, and business. Both studies were researched through talking–whilst–walking interviews which allowed investigation of how categorisations and perceptions of species related to interactions with plants. The level of international and national environmental politics and management, where official definitions of alienness, nativeness and invasiveness are formulated, was investigated through a literature review serving as a crucial context for the two qualitative studies. Analytically, the thesis rests on a combination of different theoretical perspectives that enable an investigation of alienness, nativeness and invasiveness at individual, professional, and political levels. At the individual level, Ingold’s (2000) notion of dwelling as a mode of being-in-the-world has been combined with insights from more-than-human geography (for example Wolch & Emel 1998; Whatmore 1999; Matless 2000; Philo & Wilbert 2000; Jones & Cloke 2002; Whatmore 2002, 2003; Cloke & Jones 2004; Whatmore 2006), and in particular studies of human-plant relationships which focus on social agency as both a human and a non-human capacity (see for example Head & Atchison 2009). In this thesis, human- 5 plant relationships in domestic gardens have been studied to illuminate how domestic gardeners’ embodied experiences with plants correspond to the terminology and policies on alien, invasive species applied by the environmental management sector. At the professionals’ level, I am inspired by the intellectual historian Quentin Skinner’s (2002) perspective of concepts as speech acts, in order to investigate how the landscape architects, planners and environmentalists at Fornebu perceived and related to plants as well as the concepts alienness, nativeness and invasiveness. One refereed book chapter and two peer-reviewed journal papers have been written based in the empirical investigations. The first paper (paper 1) investigates how alienness, nativeness and invasiveness are practiced in domestic gardens in Oppland. The concepts alien and native as applied by environmental authorities did not correspond to the gardeners’ embodied experiences with plants. Most of the gardeners in the Oppland study were aware of the environmental authorities’ warnings about alien species, but still did not necessarily associate the concept of alien with something negative. The domestic garden can be compared to a private laboratory, where gardeners feel autonomous and in control when experimenting with invasive or climatically unsuited plants. However, as the negative focus on invasive alien species is increasing in scientific, political, and public arenas, the perception of alien species as unwanted has emerged in the context of gardens. The Oppland study revealed that gardeners changed their behaviour and attitudes when they recognised certain species as problematic to control, i.e. they are invasive. As domestic gardens are products of both nature and culture, and are largely controlled environments in the semi–private domain, the gardeners’ perspectives and experiences have largely been overlooked in Norwegian environmental policy–making. It is however a well-studied fact that domestic gardens can severely affect the composition of biodiversity through alien species spreads (see for example Fremstad & Elven 1997a; Zagorski et al. 2004; Dehnen-Schmutz et al. 2007). Consequently, it is important to be aware of how alienness, nativeness and invasiveness work in domestic gardens in order to improve communication between environmental authorities and garden owners. In the Fornebu study, Skinner (2002) enabled an investigation of how concepts were used as rhetorical tools in the conflict
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