Bureaucrats vs. Bunnies: The dilemmas of urban wildlife management
2023 (English)Conference paper, Oral presentation with published abstract (Refereed)
Abstract [en]
Municipal hunters and wildlife managers are entrusted with the task of keeping the urban fauna in balance through preemptive measures, and by culling animals. Based on interviews with hunters, municipal officials, and wildlife rescuers in ten municipalities in Sweden, as well as participant observations during hunts, this study identifies the dilemmas that people face as they engage in wildlife management. In conversations about birds, cats, deer, moose, and lots and lots of rabbits, the interviewees paint a picture of a tension-filled task of managing animals that are not quite wild, but definitely not tame. First, there needs to be a balance between invisibility, to carry through smooth culls, and transparency, to maintain the trust of the community. Second, there is sometimes a clash between efficiency and social acceptability, which means that best practices must sometimes be set aside in favor of more aesthetically appealing methods. Last, knowing when to hold your fire is just as central to urban wildlife management as knowing when to shoot—if not even more so. Therefore, to cull or not to cull is the third dilemma of urban wildlife management.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Oulu: University of Oulu, 2023.
Keywords [en]
biosecurity, biopolitics, human-animal studies, necropolitics, rabbits, urban studies, wildlife management, thanatopolitics
National Category
Social Anthropology Sociology Media and Communications
Research subject
Working Life Studies
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:mdh:diva-64479OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mdh-64479DiVA, id: diva2:1803194
Conference
(Un)Common Worlds III: Navigating and Inhabiting Biodiverse Anthropocenes, University of Oulu, Finland, Online, 4–6 October, 2023
Funder
Swedish Research Council Formas, 2019-01168
Note
Oral presentation given on October 4.
2023-10-072023-10-072023-12-07Bibliographically approved