Conservation without Nature: the Trouble with \u3cem\u3eIn Situ\u3c/em\u3e Versus \u3cem\u3eEx Situ\u3c/em\u3e Conservation

Although understudied in academia and mostly unheard of by the general public, the in situ/ex situ dichotomy has shaped — and still very much shapes — the development of the nature conservation movement and its institutional alliances in the last few decades. Latin for “in” and “out” of place, the in/ex situ dichotomy often stands for the seemingly less scientific dichotomy between wild nature and captivity. Drawing on ethnographic engagements with zoo professionals and wildlife managers, this article explores the evolution of the in situ/ex situ dyad in nature conservation, which traverses the worlds of dead and live matter, artificilia and naturalia, and the seemingly disconnected institutions of museums and zoos, game parks, and nature reserves. Drawing on animal and relational geography, the article suggests that the assumptions underlying the in situ versus ex situ divide in conservation are anachronistic, romantic, and unsustainable and that they are incompatible with ideas of naturecultures and multinatures and with non-traditional perceptions of space. Eventually, this grounded study of conservation discourses and practices highlights the possibility of conservation management without nature

Governing Certain Things: The Regulation of Street Trees in Four North American Cities

Most sociolegal studies of the urban street focus on the human element. By focusing on the tree, my Article offers a unique perspective on the interrelations between various actors within the public spaces of modern North American cities. Situated at the intersection of legal geography, anthropology, and Science and Technology Studies, this Article demonstrates how natural artifacts function as technologies of governance, thereby masking crucial political interventions behind a natural facade. The tensions between nature and the city, as embedded in both the construction and the regulation of street trees, provide an unusual perspective on the management of urban populations and on the intricate relationship between law, space, and technology

A Tale of Two Zoos

This short piece tells the story of the Israeli occupation through the relationship between two zoos: the Biblical Zoo in Jerusalem and the Qalqilya Zoo in the West Bank. Despite the insistence by all interviewees that the zoos’ animals exist beyond the contentious politics of this place, this essay demonstrates that the two zoos are deeply entangled in hegemonic relations. The Israelis have the animals, the professional means, and the education. And as they give, take, and educate their Palestinian counterparts, they also create and enforce the proper conservation standards, thereby controlling the meaning of care for zoo animals, both in Israel and in Palestine. In effect, the Israeli gaze penetrates beyond the formal Israel/Palestine border. Instead of a straightforward story about sustaining wildlife, the control of zoo animals is a form of postcolonial ecology: an indirect penetration of the nation-state through nongovernmental means and in the name of conservation

Anticipating Endangerment: The Biopolitics of Threatened Species Lists

The last two decades have witnessed an explosion of national and global lists of threatened and endangered species. This article draws on interviews with prominent list managers and observations of their assessments to explore the scientific practices of list-making in the context of species conservation. Delving into the complex calculations of risk and threat that take place in the process of ranking nonhuman species based on their probability of extinction, the article explores the threatened species list as a biopolitical technology of catastrophe governance. My focus on two prominent lists — the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and NatureServe’s assessment system — illuminates various characteristics of futuristic governance through the threatened species list, including its properties as a list-database hybrid and as a barometer of life. I also explore the biopolitical regime of ranking life and its focus on species, its governing of direct (human) threats and the nature-culture binary that this promotes, its status as scientific and apolitical and its aspiration for global reach, and the “species experts” versus “threat experts” divide that underpins its operations. The article concludes with a discussion on the effects of the lists’ increasing automation and “algorithmization,” as seen from the perspective of the lists’ managers. The lists’ “threat calculator” in particular quantifies and projects present and future threats to nonhuman species, using fuzzy numbers, ordinal scales, and open standards to anticipate and prevent the forth-coming Sixth Extinction

Legal Tails: Policing American Cities through Animals

Published as Chapter 8 in Policing Cities: Urban Securitization and Regulation in a 21st Century World, Randy K. Lippert & Kevin Walby, eds. “I don’t worry about the four-legged animals,” Officer Armatys tells me as I scramble to catch up when he enters a backyard with a fierce-looking dog. “It’s the two-legged animals I am concerned about.” I interviewed Officer Armatys twice, first in his office in the Erie County’s Society for the Protection of Animals (ESPCA) and, a few months later, on a ride-along during a routine workday. Based on these encounters and numerous others with members of the ESPCA and with city administrators of animal control, this essay conveys bits and pieces of the story of how the City of Buffalo polices its nonhuman population. Specifically, I focus on the regulation and enforcement of dog laws in the city, what I refer to as “legal tails.” I argue that although seemingly enacted to control dogs, animal laws and ordinances are very much a way to monitor and control the conduct of humans. In the city, human-animal relations are expressed, regulated, and surveilled more closely than anywhere else. Animal laws instruct us which animals are allowed into the city and under what conditions. More than regulating the everyday of urban life as it pertains to animals, humans, and the interrelations thereof, such laws and their enforcement help define the very essence of the city. Indeed, such regulations and systems of surveillance define not only the limits of human conduct, but also the limits of the city itself. Through its distinct matrix of animal-human relationships, the city is distinguished from its significant other, the country, where a different set of animal-human relations is permitted to take place.https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/book_sections/1084/thumbnail.jp

Animals and Law in the American City

Published as Chapter 6 in Environmental Law and Contrasting Ideas of Nature: a Constructivist Approach, Keith H. Hirokawa, ed. Whereas a large and growing scholarly literature is dedicated to studying human populations in the city, not much has been written about nonhuman animals in this space. This essay explores the presence of nonhuman animals in the American city through a legal lens. I begin with a few general contemplations about the legal classification of animals in American cities, and then move to explore specific legal classifications of animals in cities: domestic and companion animals, agriculture or livestock animals, wild animals, and pests. I argue that such animal classifications are not as fixed and static as they present themselves to be. For example, a pig or a horse may be a companion animal under anti-cruelty provisions or livestock under provisions regulating agribusiness. Studying various examples of animal reclassification, this essay demonstrates the inherent messiness of the legal ordering of animals and reveals the legal struggles to redefine such ordering. The honeybee in particular demonstrates the fluidity between various animal classifications and the ways in which animals are subject to, and themselves affect, legal and administrative practices. Alongside the attempt to classify animals, a considerable effort also goes into keeping animals confined within their particular classifications. The prohibitions from keeping wild and farm animals as pets, and those that prohibit treating pets as pests or pests as pets — all point to the desire of lawmakers to place and keep animals within their classifications so as to ensure that cities are safe, sanitized, and free of animal nuisances. At the same time, human and nonhuman animals also express their own, sometimes conflicting, trajectories that transgress and challenge their black-boxing within legal classifications, forcing lawmakers and enforcers to adapt or develop new legal ways to organize disorderly nature so as to redefine, reestablish, and reinforce order. My reading of animal laws thus illuminates the dynamic and often conflicted human-animal existence in the city and its translation and reiteration by legal texts and practices.https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/book_sections/1078/thumbnail.jp

Animal Frontiers: A Tale of Three Zoos in Israel/Palestine

Situated within fifty miles of each other at the heart of Israel-Palestine, three zoos — Jerusalem, Qalqilya, and Gaza — tell three very different stories about nonhuman animals, humans, and their imbricated survival across borders and at times of war. Through in-depth interviews with personnel from these three zoos, this article tracks the material and symbolic identities of three zoo animals. Yet the article is not just about animals; it is also a story about nationalism and its clandestine manifestations in ideologies of conservation. I argue here that alongside the straightforward story about sustaining wildlife, Israeli zoos’ control of zoo animals is a form of postcolonial ecology: an indirect penetration of the nation-state through nongovernmental means — and in the name of conservation

Planting the Promised Landscape: Zionism, Nature, and Resistance in Israel/Palestine

This article reveals the complex historical and cultural processes that have led to the symbiotic identification between pine trees and Jewish people in Israel/Palestine. It introduces three tree donation techniques used by Israel, then proceeds to discuss the meaning of nature in Israel, as well as the meaning of planting and rooting in the context of the Zionist project. The article concludes by reflecting on the ways that pine trees absent Palestinian presence and memory from the landscape, and explains how Palestinian acts of aggression toward these pine landscapes relate to the Israel/Palestine relationship

Governing with Clean Hands: Automated Public Toilets and Sanitary Surveillance

To anyone familiar with the story of urban decay in major American cities in the 1980s – and with the subsequent abolition of toilets from city streets – the introduction of automated public toilets (APTs) to urban spaces sounds like very good news. This article explores the re-democratizing message that commonly accompanies the introduction of APTs to North American city streets as well as their on-the-ground manifestations. It focuses on two major components of APTs: privatization and automation. The process of privatization, which characterizes most APT operations in North America, carries with it various exclusionary effects that stand in stark contrast to the democratic aspirations of public space. Additionally, the APTs normally feature automated devices, and, most prominently, the auto-flush and the automated faucet and dryer. On the face of things, these devices eradicate the injustices that sometimes accompany human discretion. However, they also conceal the necessarily social and value-ridden human decision making that goes into their design. The article proposes that both the privatization and the automation of public toilets are part of a broader and increasingly expansive sanitary regime, one that imposes a morality in practice on its users. The latter are left with relatively limited options as to how to use the space of the washroom and at times join the nonhuman devices themselves in “kicking-back” at their programmers. By comparing automated toilets with attendant-based ones, the article suggests that the project of sanitary surveillance exemplifies the fluidity between traditional and new forms of surveillance

Loo Law: The Public Washroom as a Hyper-Regulated Space

The article suggests that the public washroom is the most regulated of all public spaces, at least in the United States. It offers several possible explanations for this hyper-juridical attention. First and foremost, the article argues, such hyper-regulation of the public washroom has to do with the sanitary and moral significance of this space. Secondly, the intensity of washroom regulation is due to its ambiguous public/private properties. Finally, the intense regulation of the public washroom is the result of physio-anatomical functions performed in it. Utilizing the State of New York as a lens through which to observe the various issues raised by what it refers to as loo law, the article unravels the regulatory regime that governs this mundane and somewhat unattended to space. This exploration of the minute operations of law is also the basis for broader claims made in this article about the relationship between law and architectural design. Mainly, the article argues that legal norms not only reflect certain cultural norms and practices but that, through their physical manifestation, these cultural norms and practices are also standardized and fixed by legal norms. Hence, the combined work of law and architectural design renders certain norms and practices - e.g. the gender-based segregation of washrooms or our sitting posture on toilet seats - more rigid and less changeable, in turn accounting for what we tend to consider as our second nature