In 1950, a group of scientists and public figures, based in Hawaii and England, launched a transnational “restoration project” to save the nēnē or Hawaiian goose from extinction. Scrutinizing this project highlights how endangered species were valued as part of a historically contingent process that reflected and linked the interests of different groups. People did not undertake the restoration project simply because they realized the nēnē were endangered, but, instead, they sought to rescue it at the “eleventh hour” in order to legitimize the new conservation organizations that they helped establish after the Second World War. They also engaged with broader political and socioeconomic concerns to justify the restoration project, publicly framing the nēnē as a valuable asset that benefited Hawaii’s tourist economy and push for statehood. Disputes over the reintroduction of geese bred in England highlight how the nēnē were valued in complex and sometimes contradictory ways, with unforeseen consequences for both the restoration project and its animal subjects. This case study ultimately draws our attention to the inherently biopolitical nature of modern conservation, by showing that there is no simple trajectory from endangered life to valued life.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Ezra Rashkow;
(2023)
The Nature of Endangerment in India: Tigers, 'Tribes', Extermination & Conservation, 1818-2020
Article
Marianna Szczygielska;
(2024)
War on Extinction: Wildlife as Statecraft in Interwar Poland
Article
Cabin, Robert J.;
(2013)
Nature Is Dead. Long Live Nature!
Article
Drew Swanson;
(2023)
Growing Wild: Visions of Wildlife Management as Agricultural Science in American Forests and Fields
Article
Hans Olav Bråtå;
(October 2020)
From Local Initiative to National State Process: The Case of Rondane National Park, Norway
Book
Peter S. Alagona;
(2022)
The Accidental Ecosystem: People and Wildlife in American Cities
Thesis
Jeffrey Schauer;
(2014)
Imperial Ark? The Politics of Wildlife in East and South-Central Africa, 1920-1992
Article
William Knight;
Kiethen Sutherland;
(2023)
The Pacific Salmon Experiment in Northern Ontario and the “Indian Problem”
Article
Hou, Shen;
(January 2018)
Wanted: A Planetary History for an Age of Crisis
Article
Sowards, Adam M.;
(January 2018)
Sometimes, It Takes a Table
Article
Steigerwald, Joan;
(2000)
The Cultural Enframing of Nature: Environmental Histories in the German Romantic Period
Chapter
Maunu Häyrynen;
(2014)
Lost Landscapes: Degraded Landscape as Anti-Landscape
Book
Alexander von Humboldt;
Vera M. Kutzinski;
Ottmar Ette;
(2019)
Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, Volume 1: A Critical Edition
Article
Swanson, Drew A.;
(2012)
Endangered Species and Threatened Landscapes in Appalachia: Managing the Wild and the Human in the American Mountain South
Article
Barrow, Mark V.;
(2009)
Dragons in Distress: Naturalists as Bioactivists in the Campaign to Save the American Alligator
Article
Charlotte Wrigley;
(2023)
An explosive landscape: Arranging the barnacle goose on the Solway Firth
Book
Johnson, Christopher;
Govatski, David;
(2013)
Forests for the People: The Story of America's Eastern National Forests
Chapter
Barrow, Mark V., Jr.;
(2010)
On the Trail of the Ivory-Bill: Field Science, Local Knowledge, and the Struggle to Save Endangered Species
Article
Benson, Etienne;
(2012)
Endangered Science: The Regulation of Research by the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection and Endangered Species Acts
Article
Russell McGregor;
(2021)
Alec Chisholm and the extinction of the Paradise Parrot
Be the first to comment!