Session: 6a
Day: Friday 17 April
Time: 9.15–11.00
Room: JK2–3 1.10
Chair: Eline Tabak
Panel description: Cane toads in Australia, rapa whelks in the Black Sea, and grey squirrels in the United Kingdom are only a few among thousands of species labelled invasive. Defined as introduced organisms that cause ecological or economic harm, they are also presented as one of the greatest threats to global biodiversity. Yet our responses to them reveal striking inconsistencies. Some species are vilified and exterminated, others tolerated, and a few even cherished—exposing the contingent logics that underpin how we decide which lives to kill, which to save, and which to ignore.
In the public domain, invasive species frequently accrue meanings that reach beyond ecology. They may be cast as symbolic threats to national integrity or cultural identity, while endangered natives are made to embody an idealised, often nostalgic, natural heritage. Such narratives raise questions about what counts as native or invasive, whether ecosystems were ever stable, and how ecological concerns become entangled with political and cultural anxieties.
This panel gathers perspectives from history, heritage studies, STS, and the environmental humanities to interrogate the shifting stories told about invasive species from the eighteenth century to the present. By tracing how ideas of invasion have been constructed, contested, and mobilised across time, while acknowledging their impacts, we aim to illuminate the dynamic relationships between changing ecological realities and the shifting cultural narratives where practices of care and eradication are negotiated, justified and contested.
Henry Strivens, “Fascist Squirrels and Dog Whistles: The Exploitation of Ecological Issues in Far-Right British Politics”
Abstract: Following the introduction of grey squirrels to the British Isles in the 19th Century, the population of the native red squirrel has dramatically declined. The greys proved to be much better at adapting to a rapidly changing industrial landscape, outperforming the reds and becoming the dominant squirrel species across the majority of the country. This narrative is currently being exploited by the fascist British nationalist party, the Patriotic Alternative, and their associated brand Towler’s Tea. The red squirrel’s vulnerability and prominent place in popular culture have made them a dog whistle for the ‘great replacement’ theory that argues white Britons are being ‘replaced’ through immigration. The party has included them across branding, policy, and merchandise, even producing a series of children’s books focused on the animals, exploiting an ecological issue to promote hateful rhetoric.
In this paper, I apply my adaption of the conceptual framework of (animal) authorised heritage discourse to discuss the significant role that seemingly innocuous species can have for pushing ideological agendas. I will be looking at some of the media produced by the Patriotic Alternative to examine how and why animal narratives can be so politically effective. This research is particularly relevant in the current political climate, ultimately suggesting that there is no way to apoliticise the narratives and bodies of invasive species, so it becomes necessary to re-claim and re-frame them to deal with the ecological issue while challenging fascist politics.
Bio: Henry Strivens is an independent researcher, recently graduating from the University of York’s Public History MA. They also have a BA in history from the University of York. Their research interests centre around the involvement of animals within heritage spaces and media, with a focus on breeds and species that are thus far underrepresented in historical narratives. They have also worked with community interest companies such as Uncomfortable Heritage in their mission to highlight untold human histories in UK cities.
Katie Kung (LMU Munich), “Killing for Conservation: Invasive Species, Taxonomical Impulse, and Storying a Predator-Free New Zealand”
Abstract: What kinds of stories are told, and what forms of life are organised, to make a predator-free future both thinkable and inevitable? Predator Free 2050 (PF2050) is an initiative launched by the Aotearoa New Zealand government in 2016 to eradicate three groups of ‘invasive introduced predators’: mustelids, rats and possums by mid-century to restore native biodiversity. This paper examines how PF2050 mobilises history and taxonomy to enact a particular necropolitical regime, in which certain lives are rendered killable so others may flourish. I argue that the PF2050 discourse produces the idea of ‘the predator’ by realigning Aotearoa’s biodiversity decline to the category ‘predators’ and the ecological process of predation as the key threat, through myth-making—leveraging a pre-invasion historicity—and science-making—developing the three predators into a killable scientific property. The emphasis on ‘predators’ is historically and technologically contingent and stems from the need to create familiarity to flatten nuances.
This paper reflects on the category of ‘invasives’ and the other names and categories under which organisms are gathered, managed and condemned. In the case of Aotearoa, its long biogeographical isolation and unique evolutionary history amplify and simplify debates around ‘invasive species’, such as the possibility of defining nativeness and the justification for preferences for native species over others. The examination of PF2050 shows that it does not make the violent rhetoric of invasion and eradication less conceptually and practically troubled. Ultimately, I suggest that conservation pasts and futures can be imagined and understood otherwise: less through multispecies enmity and more through care, less on tallying the dead and more on reducing the need to kill.
Bio: Katie Kung is a PhD candidate and lecturer in Environmental Humanities, at the Rachel Carson Center in LMU Munich. She has a BA from Hong Kong University and Durham University, and an MA from the University of Heidelberg in Germany. Her doctoral project, titled ‘Troubled Care: Invasive Species in a More-than-Human World’, researches the intersection of multispecies studies and STS. She is also an editor in the Environmental Humanities platform Environmental History Now.
Vincent Bijlman (Utrecht University), “The Ruddy Duck Invasion in Europe: The Construction of a Threat to Global Biodiversity in the Late 20th Century”
Abstract: This paper explores how the ruddy duck (Oxyura jamaicensis) became the object of local and international control efforts in Europe and was framed as an invasive threat to global biodiversity. ‘Native’ in the United States, the ruddy duck was first introduced into a wildfowl park in the United Kingdom by international conservationist and wildfowl enthusiast Peter Scott. However, the duck escaped and established a feral population in the United Kingdom in the late 1950s. By the 1980s, it became clear that the population would increase exponentially in the following years and spread to continental Europe. This population expansion and movement were of concern to members of international conservation networks, who were worried by the occurrence of hybridisation between the ruddy duck and the globally threatened white-headed duck (Oxyura leucocephala), another stiff-tailed duck species that resided in the Spanish Doñana National Park. The concern for biodiversity loss led to various large-scale studies and culling programmes throughout Europe, most prominently in the United Kingdom and Spain.
My paper will analyse how a variety of internationally connected stakeholders negotiated an intricate set of practices to contain the perceived threat. I argue that since the late 1980s, new groups of animals, such as the ruddy duck, have been problematized as invasive threats to global biodiversity. As such, I will use the case of the ruddy duck to study the transborder dynamics of invasive species science and control in the late twentieth century to dissect how the Ruddy Duck is constructed as a global biodiversity threat.
Bio: Vincent Bijman is an environmental historian and lecturer in political history at Utrecht University. In his PhD, part of the project Moving Animals: A History of Science, Media and Policy in the Twentieth Century (Maastricht University), he studied the history of animal invasions, and in particular the role of scientification in how moving ‘problem animals’ are understood. The ruddy duck is one of his dissertation case studies.