The New Mobilities of the Anthropocene: Animal Migration, Infrastructure Development, and Wildlife Population Management

Michigan Technological University, Houghton MI

Investigators

Abstract

The objective of the proposed research is to examine the history of conservation and restoration efforts for three iconic migratory species of the north: woodland caribou, coaster brook trout, and common loons. All three species have been the focus of decades of restoration efforts, yet all three remain at risk in northern landscapes. The project seeks to understand what we can learn from past efforts at understanding and managing migratory species, with the ultimate goal of contributing to more sustainable strategies in the Anthropocene. Although project is located within the upper Great Lakes basin, it is expected to generate results that will provide insights for other scientific and regulatory contexts, particularly those that concern extractive industries and their effects on migratory species. Broader impact activities will include a professionally-designed website; educational activities with Indigenous communities and the Great Lakes Research Center including a webinar and presentations at a public information session; and media outreach activities including interviews on regional and national podcasts and radio broadcasts. This is a project to engage in interdisciplinary research; specifically, it adds new dimensions to environmental history and STS by incorporating spatial considerations. The PI and her collaborator will examine the recent emergence of movement ecology as a science, analyzing the ways new military technologies allowed migrating wildlife to be tracked and thereby making the invisible visible. They will then analyze ways that emerging infrastructures of the Anthropocene threaten persistence of the migratory species that are becoming newly visible. Methods from spatial history will enable them to visualize and analyze ways that the mobility of wildlife, extractive industries, and contaminants influenced efforts to conceptualize and then manage migratory species. To spatial history, they will integrate STS tools of discourse analysis, enabling them to analyze ways that government agencies negotiated growing pressures from extractive industries to open boreal watersheds for development. The project will combine ecology, environmental history, and broad STS approaches in an integrative research project that will serve to advance each of these fields. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.