cs_19_63R2 Conservation and Society AOP: 1-11, 2020 1 1 2 Special Section: Rewilding ‘Feral Political Ecologies 2 3 3 4 4 5 The Reintroduction of Beavers to Scotland: Rewilding, Biopolitics, and the 5 6 Affordance of Non-human Autonomy 6 7 7 8 Kim J Warda,# and Jonathan Priorb 8 9 9 10 aSchool of Geography, Earth and Environmental Science, Plymouth University, Plymouth, UK. 10 11 bSchool of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales. 11 12 12 13 13 #Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected] 14 14 15 15 16 Abstract 16 17 17 Rewilding is a distinctive form of ecological restoration that has emerged quite publicly within environmental 18 18 policy and conservation advocacy circles. One of the fundamental tenets of rewilding is its emphasis on non-human 19 19 autonomy, yet empirical examples that examine non-human autonomy are currently limited. While there is a growing 20 20 body of literature on the biopolitics of broader environmental conservation strategies, there is comparatively little 21 21 scholarship on the biopolitics of rewilding. This paper argues that autonomy should not be used as a boundary 22 22 marker to denote ‘wild’ non-humans, but as a situated condition that is variable across locations. It offers an 23 23 empirical study of the biopolitics that govern the different expressions of non-human autonomy at two different 24 24 locations in Scotland, where beavers have been reintroduced. The fndings reveal how, depending on location and 25 25 context, modes of governance related to rewilding strategies co-exist and interplay with animal autonomy and 26 26 forms of power in contradictory ways. 27 27 28 Keywords: Rewilding, reintroduction, beavers, biopolitics, autonomy, more-than-human agency, Scotland 28 29 29 30 30 31 31 32 INTRODUCTION 2013; Wynne-Jones et al. 2018). One of the fundamental 32 33 tenets of rewilding is a focus on non-human autonomy, yet 33 34 Rewilding is a distinctive form of ecological restoration empirical examples which examine non-human autonomy 34 35 that has emerged quite publicly within environmental within rewilding practice are lacking (see DeSilvey and 35 36 policy and conservation advocacy circles. While there Bartolini 2019 for an exception). Although there is a growing 36 37 have been some recent discussions about rewilding from body of literature that pays attention to the biopolitics of 37 38 a theoretical perspective within the social sciences and broader environmental conservation strategies (Lorimer and 38 39 humanities (for example Gammon 2018; Jørgensen 2015; Driessen 2013; Biermann and Mansfeld 2014; Srinivasan 39 40 Prior and Ward 2016; Lorimer and Driessen 2014; Lorimer 2013 Hodgetts 2016; Cavanagh 2018), there is relatively little 40 41 and Driessen 2016), analyses of rewilding underpinned by empirically-based work on the biopolitics of rewilding. 41 42 empirical research within this body of literature are relatively This paper provides a detailed empirical study of 42 43 slight (for notable exceptions see for example Prior and non-human autonomy across two sites in the rewilding of 43 44 Brady 2017; Crowley et al. 2017; Lorimer and Driessen beavers in Scotland. Our analysis focuses on how expressions 44 45 of autonomy are operationalised to varying degrees across 45 46 Access this article online two different spatial-temporal political contexts of rewilding 46 47 Quick Response Code: in Scotland. The frst is Knapdale Forest, the offcial site of 47 Website: beaver reintroduction, while the second context is the Tayside 48 www.conservationandsociety.org 48 49 river catchment, an unoffcial site of beaver reintroduction. The 49 50 study examines the biopolitical techniques used to determine 50 51 DOI: beaver autonomy and the extent to which rewilding projects 51 52 10.4103/cs.cs_19_63 intersect with governance and conservation practices and 52 53 other forms of power. The fndings highlight how beaver 53 54 54 55 Copyright: © Ward and Prior 2020. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits 55 unrestricted use and distribution of the article, provided the original work is cited. Published by Wolters Kluwer - Medknow, Mumbai | Managed and supported 56 by the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Bangalore. For reprints contact: [email protected] 56 2 / Ward and Prior 1 autonomy and power coalesce and how modes of governance ‘It is autonomy which rewilding ‘restores’, allowing it 1 2 co-exist and interplay with non-human autonomy in sometimes to become truly different from classical restoration by 2 3 contradictory ways. unshackling its historic baselines and by no longer needing 3 4 prolonged human management to keep an ecosystem in a 4 5 REWILDING, AUTONOMY AND BIOPOLITICS preferred state.’ 5 6 This rejection of humans maintaining ecosystems in a 6 7 The concept of rewilding can be traced back to the US-based preferred state, is potentially at odds with other conservation 7 8 Wildlands Project founded in the early 1990s. An early strategies: ‘Rewilding by its nature implies a more dynamic 8 9 definition was subsequently provided by Michael Soulé and functionalist approach with less predictable or desirable 9 10 and Reed Noss, two conservation biologists involved in the outcomes for some species, possibly even those of high 10 11 Wildlands Project, as: ‘the scientifc argument for restoring conservation concern, which were favoured by past human 11 12 big wilderness based on the regulatory roles of large predators’ interventions and may not do so well under rewilding.’ 12 13 (Soulé and Noss 1998: 22). Since the paper was published, (Lorimer et al. 2015: 53) 13 14 there has been a rapid proliferation of conceptualisations Indeed, because the realisation of non-human autonomy 14 15 and defnitions of rewilding over its relatively short lifespan is an objective of rewilding, wherein ecological change 15 16 (for commentary on this proliferation, see for example (rather than managed stasis) is valued, rewilders accept that 16 17 Gammon 2018; Jørgensen 2015; and Pettorelli et al. 2018), the future loss of certain species from a given landscape is a 17 18 many of which do not posit either ‘big wilderness’ or the likely outcome of rewilding, as is the acceptance of ecological 18 19 return of ‘large predators’ as objectives for rewilding. Indeed, ‘experimentation’ and surprise (Prior and Brady 2017; Lorimer 19 20 the restoration of non-apex species, the ‘de-domestication’ of and Driessen 2014). Within this formulation of conservation 20 21 ungulates, and the removal of barriers within landscapes that practice then, we fnd a distinct form of biopolitics at work. 21 22 prevent the movement of wild species, such as dams and fences, The Foucauldian notion of biopower refers to the way that 22 23 are all now considered to be components of rewilding practice. power can be operationalised to ‘make live and let die’; in 23 24 This has led some to observe that ‘rewilding’ lacks juxtaposition to the notion of sovereign power which is the 24 25 defnitional precision, making it a ‘vague’ and ‘fuzzy’ concept power to ‘take life or let live’ (Foucault 1978: 136-137; for 25 26 (Jørgensen 2015), while others have stated that rewilding cannot an excellent review of political ecology debates of biopower 26 27 be distinguished from other ecological restoration practices see Cavanagh 2018). While not mutually exclusive, biopower 27 28 (Hayward et al. 2019). We have argued elsewhere that there is is further differentiated into anatomo-politics (the governance 28 29 coherence between different defnitions of rewilding, and that of individual bodies) and biopolitics (the techniques of power 29 30 rewilding can be understood as a distinctive form of ecological targeted at the level of populations). Biopolitical scholarship 30 31 restoration (Prior and Ward 2016; see also Gammon 2018). therefore concerns the administration of populations and 31 32 While other types of ecological restoration are enacted through focuses on the techniques for the management of ‘social, 32 33 sustained human intervention and stewardship, rewilding cultural, environmental, economic and geographical conditions 33 34 is grounded in an ethos of relinquishing direct human under which humans live, procreate, being ill, maintain health 34 35 management of wild organisms or ecological processes, and or become healthy, and die’ (Dean 2010: 99). Scholarship in 35 36 one that foregrounds the self-directed actions of non-humans the vein has contributed to understanding how power is enacted 36 37 which we conceptualise as the affordance of non-human through multiple logics, strategies and spatial practices across 37 38 autonomy (Prior and Ward 2015). and within human populations. 38 39 Such non-human autonomy in the context of rewilding Foucault’s notion of biopolitics has also recently emerged in 39 40 should not be read as a discontinuity between humans scholarly discussions of nature by those who seek to develop 40 41 and non-humans; it is not an attempt to radically sever the a more-than-human understanding of knowledge-power 41 42 ‘natural’ from the ‘cultural’ as with wilderness management relationships (Whatmore 2002). ‘More-than-human’ 42 43 (Prior and Brady 2017). Instead, rewilding places emphasis scholars resist and rework human-centred conceptions of 43 44 on - and indeed normatively celebrates - the agency of agency to propose a non-deterministic acknowledgement 44 45 non-humans in often complex social-ecological systems. that socio-material change occurs through the combined 45 46 Non-human autonomy, when applied to populations and agency of human and non-human beings, or what they call 46 47 communities of species, includes (but is not limited to) an ‘more-than-human’ life. Scholars of more-than-human 47 48 ability to move, grow, procreate, and die, and when applied to geographies and Science and Technology Studies (STS) 48 49 ecological processes an ability to erode, food, and decompose, have argued for the inclusion and understanding of 49 50 in ways that are not managed or coordinated by direct human more-than-human actors in biopolitical investigations, 50 51 interventions.