I have written before about the tendency, currently enjoying gusts in its sails, to grant rights to natural environments. In practical terms, it all started in a borough in Pennsylvania, but really came to international prominence with Ecuador’s 2008 constitution, the first one in the world to grant constitutional rights to nature. These are the right […]
Category: Conservation
Habitats
Everything that lives must live somewhere. The idea of habitat, at its core, is nothing more than the designation of a home for a particular form of life. In theory, everything that finds appropriate conditions for its own life requirements has found its habitat. If we are thinking along Darwinian and ecological lines, then chance […]
Rewilding Documentary
ARTE is set to air (though you can already watch it online) the first full-length documentary on European rewilding. While I was researching the reintroduction of European Bison to the Souther Carpathians (you can read about that here) I had the pleasure to meet the film crew and talk with them about my work. Some […]
Know thy neighbour: how humans know jackals in the Danube Delta
via Know thy neighbour: how humans know jackals in the Danube Delta
Gratitude
I have spent the last three months in New Zealand, immersed in a world very different from the one that defines my usual daily life. I have had the luxury of time-to-think, something that, even though I became an academic for it, is rarer by the day. I have also had the opportunity to start […]
Crisis
It has been impossible lately to think of anything else but the looming disaster of climate change. It feels irresponsible to think about anything else, to let marches and organizing work go by because of ‘normal life’. Each one of us is, in their own way, insignificant. But together we can demand, in the 11th […]
Who is guarding whom?
I am currently in Aotearoa New Zealand for a three-month fellowship researching two legal persons: the river Whanganui, and the former national park and ancestral Tūhoe homeland, Te Urewera. These natural beings were recognized as persons in law, a move that has generated widespread international media coverage and fawning commentary. I will write in future […]
Moving to a town near you
In many articles on this blog I have spoken about the reintroduction of animals to areas where they have gone extinct. This practice has become common in rewilding projects, and it has many advantages, not least the publicity that comes from releasing charismatic megafauna (yes, mostly them). The public relations campaigns of conservation and rewilding […]
The Pigeon in the Coal Mine
The Côa Valley, Eastern Portugal, is dotted with thousands of pigeon houses. It is impossible not to notice the elegant structures that seem to fit timelessly within the landscape. Though they look like they’ve always been there, this is not true. For a region with a history dating back tens of thousands of years, they […]
Trial of Fire
In mid-April I travelled to Western Iberia to visit the Faia Brava nature reserve (Portugal) and meet some of the people responsible for it. The name means ‘wild cliff’ in the Portuguese spoken in this remote, achingly beautiful area. The organisation managing the area, the Transhumance and Nature Foundation (ATN), was started in 2000 by […]
The Civil Animal 