Whitney, Kristoffer Jon (Author)
This dissertation asks, fundamentally, how it is that humans come to value and share nonhuman nature. More specifically, I follow the wildlife scientists and managers who have studied shorebirds throughout the "Atlantic flyway," from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. The first two chapters are historical in nature, examining the ways in which shorebirds have been valued and conserved and drawing special attention to bureaucratic interventions in the early and late twentieth century: e.g. the passage of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 and the Endangered Species Act of 1973, and the attention paid to shorebirds by state and federal fish and wildlife agencies. I then explore the creation of a public environmental controversy in the nineteen-nineties over the rufa red knot and its ecological connections to the Atlantic horseshoe crab--and therefore its connections to the horseshoe crab fishery. This controversy has ranged across a variety of state and federal-level agencies, as conservationists have sought to limit the horseshoe crab harvest in the Delaware Bay on behalf of shorebirds like the red knot. Chapter three is largely ethnographic, drawing upon interviews and my own experiences volunteering to band shorebirds in the Bay. I describe in detail the techniques of bird-banding as well as the affective and emotional relationships that these activities generate between wildlife researchers and their objects of study. The final two chapters look at the controversy over red knots in public and bureaucratic spaces, drawing on the voices of activists, scientists, managers, and fishers to explore the rhetoric and actions involved in the politics of shorebird conservation in the Delaware--particularly econometric arguments based on the value of ecotourism and the quantitative techniques of "Adaptive Resource Management." Bureaucratic solutions to resource conflicts can be highly effective, but also highly reductive in the ways in which they reflect and mobilize the myriad ways that Americans value their environment. I end the dissertation, therefore, by ruminating on this imbalance and speculating on the ways in which conservation controversies might more fully incorporate the experience of nature.
...MoreDescription “On the wildlife scientists and managers who have studied shorebirds...from the late 19th to the early 21st century.” Cited in ProQuest Diss. & Thes. (2012). ProQuest Doc. ID 1019989107.
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Oology and Ralph's Talking Eggs: Bird Conservation Comes out of Its Shell
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(2011)
Militarised Natural History: Tales of the Avocet's Return to Postwar Britain
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Sagarin, Rafe;
Pauchard, Aníbal;
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Observation and Ecology: Broadening the Scope of Science to Understand a Complex World
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Barrow, Mark V.;
(2009)
Nature's Ghosts: Confronting Extinction from the Age of Jefferson to the Age of Ecology
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Barrow, Mark V., Jr.;
(2010)
On the Trail of the Ivory-Bill: Field Science, Local Knowledge, and the Struggle to Save Endangered Species
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Stefan Bargheer;
(2018)
Moral Entanglements: Conserving Birds in Britain and Germany
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Article
Bonhomme, Brian;
(2007)
For the “Preservation of Friends” and the “Destruction of Enemies”: Studying and Protecting Birds in Late Imperial Russia
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Article
Whitney, Kristoffer;
(2014)
Domesticating Nature? Surveillance and Conservation of Migratory Shorebirds in the “Atlantic Flyway”
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Chapter
Greenwood, Jeremy J. D.;
(2005)
Science with a Team of Thousands: The British Trust for Ornithology
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Leaf, Sue;
(2013)
A Love Affair with Birds: The Life of Thomas Sadler Roberts
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Parikka, Jussi;
(2013)
Insects and Canaries: Medianatures and Aesthetics of the Invisible
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Fujita, Marty;
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Archipelago: The islands of Indonesia from the nineteenth-century discoveries of Alfred Russel Wallace to the fate of forests and reefs in the twenty-first century
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Ian J. Mason;
Gilbert H. Pfitzner;
(2020)
Passions in ornithology: A century of Australian egg collectors
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Thesis
Bargheer, Stefan;
(2011)
Moral Entanglements: The Emergence and Transformation of Bird Conservation in Great Britain and Germany, 1790--2010
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Star, Paul;
(2014)
Human Agency and Exotic Birds in New Zealand
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Chapter
Duarte, Regina Horta;
(2013)
Birds and Scientists in Brazil: In Search of Protection, 1894--1938
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Book
Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie;
(2018)
For the Birds: American Ornithologist Margaret Morse Nice
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Lawrence, Natalie;
(2014)
Plumed Wonders and Ornithological Passions
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Michael A. Weston;
Maree R. Yarwood;
Desley A. Whisson;
Matthew R. E. Symonds;
(2020)
Persistent spatial gaps in ornithological study in Australia, 1901–2011
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Book
Birkhead, T R;
Wimpenny, Jo;
Montgomerie, Robert D;
(2014)
Ten Thousand Birds: Ornithology since Darwin
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