REWILDING SCOTLAND’S HIGHLANDS: Life, Death and the Labour of Nonhumans A thesis submitted to The University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities 2019 Matthew McMullen Social Anthropology SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCE 1 Blank page 2 CONTENT TABLE OF FIGURES .................................................................................................. 7 ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... 9 DECLARATION ........................................................................................................ 10 COPYRIGHT STATEMENT ................................................................................... 10 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................................... 12 INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 15 Biopower: Heterogeneous Valuations of Life ............................................. 23 Wildlife Conservation as Biopolitics .......................................................... 23 Biotic Infrastructures ........................................................................................... 28 Labour, Work and the Nonhuman ................................................................... 34 Method: Multispecies Ethnography, Nonhuman Geographies and the (absent) Politics of the Nonhuman ................................................................. 44 Researching the Nonhuman Politics of Rewilding ............................... 51 Outline ........................................................................................................................ 58 Part One ................................................................................................................ 58 Part Two ............................................................................................................... 59 REWILDING IN THE HIGHLANDS ........................................................................ 61 Understanding Rewilding: Rewilding as Environmentalism ............... 61 A Genealogy of Rewilding .............................................................................. 63 Tracing the Term ............................................................................................... 66 Approaching Rewilding .................................................................................. 72 Deer Estates, Forest and Nonhuman Life in the Highlands ................... 74 Archetypes of the Wild .................................................................................... 80 3 The Organisations of Rewilding ....................................................................... 84 Forest Futures .................................................................................................... 85 Wild Foundation ................................................................................................ 86 Rewilding’s Field of Action ................................................................................. 87 PART ONE ...................................................................................................................... 93 CHAPTER ONE: PERIPHERIES ............................................................................... 94 Deer and Fences ................................................................................................... 101 Fiaclach .................................................................................................................... 105 The Disruptiveness of Trees ............................................................................ 106 The Ecological Labour of Woodland Creation .......................................... 112 Breaking up the Woodland Edge ................................................................... 114 Making the Woodland ................................................................................... 118 Interpretations ...................................................................................................... 121 Boundaries and Purification ....................................................................... 121 Artefacts .............................................................................................................. 125 ‘Misanthropy’ .................................................................................................... 127 Cutting and Contingency ................................................................................... 128 Deviation ................................................................................................................. 132 Pragmatism ............................................................................................................ 134 Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 135 CHAPTER TWO: INTERVENTIONS .................................................................... 137 A Dying Forest ....................................................................................................... 141 Wild Interventions .............................................................................................. 144 Biotic Infrastructures ......................................................................................... 147 Making Forests ...................................................................................................... 150 Act: Trees............................................................................................................ 151 Act: Fences ......................................................................................................... 154 4 Act: Seeds ........................................................................................................... 156 Act: Nursery ...................................................................................................... 158 Rewilding is ‘De-wilding’ .................................................................................. 160 “You cannot rewild somewhere wild already” ......................................... 163 Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 167 PART TWO ................................................................................................................... 170 CHAPTER THREE: SUBSTITUTION .................................................................... 171 Cutting the Cake ................................................................................................... 177 Unsettling Cares ................................................................................................... 185 Killing and Care..................................................................................................... 187 Ending Agency .................................................................................................. 189 ‘Guns as Fences’ ............................................................................................... 192 Scale and Entanglement .................................................................................... 195 Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 205 CHAPTER FOUR: WILD LABOUR ........................................................................ 208 Animal Work and Rewilding............................................................................ 211 Thinking through (Nonhuman) Labour ................................................. 213 Natural Capital and Ecosystem Services ................................................ 215 Work and Natural Capital ............................................................................ 218 Putting Pine Marten and Beavers to Work ................................................ 221 The Labour of Pine Marten .......................................................................... 221 The Labour of Beavers .................................................................................. 235 Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 243 CHAPTER FIVE: SURROGACY ............................................................................... 246 A Landscape of Fear ............................................................................................ 247 ‘Wolves once prowled…’ ................................................................................... 251 Human-Wolves ..................................................................................................... 257 5 Disturbing Deer .................................................................................................... 260 The Work of Wolves............................................................................................ 264 Killing ................................................................................................................... 266 Fear ....................................................................................................................... 267 Disturbance and Detachment .......................................................................... 271 The Surrogacy of Ecological Labour ............................................................. 276 Conclusion .............................................................................................................