Papers by Kieran O'Mahony
Cardiff University, 2019
This thesis explores the feral rewilding of wild boar in the Forest of Dean, England. Bringing to... more This thesis explores the feral rewilding of wild boar in the Forest of Dean, England. Bringing together the generative concepts of ferality and bo(a)rderlands, I show how places, practices and politics have been multifariously churned by their (re)introduction. By undertaking an empirically rich ethnography and paying attention to a range of human-nonhuman relations, the fluid presence of wild boar, their agency, and the ways in which they blur spatial and moral (b)orders are brought to the fore. This contributes to critical literature on rewilding by, firstly, expanding its focus beyond the spaces of official practice and bringing it into conversation with matters relating to biosecurity, wildlife management and risk; and, secondly, by providing an embodied and emplaced piece of research. Working broadly with post-structural approaches that emphasise movement, practices and relationality, I show how the spatial-temporal rhythms of wild boar and their more-than-human relations generate a multiplicity of affective encounters and traces. For different human actors living in vicinity to wild boar, their sudden and unexpected presence disturb and reconfigure experiences of place, whilst for governing wildlife agencies they necessitate new practices of knowledge production and techniques of control. Both boar and humans alike are shown to negotiate one another's presence in ways that co-produce new, though not necessarily desired, relational spaces. These differing experiences, responses, practices and lives coalesce as a complex and contested local politics which generates discord with the mechanisms of national policy. Thinking with the concept of feral bo(a)rderlands helps draw attention to the messy and uncertain relations, heterogenous agencies and multiple knowledges that are bound up within rewilding events. While revealing the tensions that run through these, the thesis also suggests ways in which these can be productive. the multiple rhythms of woodpeckers, waves of birdsong and mammal signs: wolf scrapings, deer antlers rubbing on bark, and boar rooting in soil. At the time, I was working as a field assistant, tracking bison movements via radio telemetry and trialling camera trapping to identify individual lynx and estimate population. Winter snow is becoming increasingly sloshy, researchers tell me, and so the reliance on snow tracking to estimate populations of solitary carnivores is more difficult. One day, following the bleeps of bison collars into a spongy, wet woodland, a colleague and I spot a sounder of wild boar, perhaps 20m away in some open understorey. Mothers and young, heads burrowed in vegetation, occasionally touching one another, grunting, temporarily oblivious to our presence. We watch as they snuffle through the soil until their behaviour changes, seemingly more vigilant, snouts up, and then vanish into vegetation. We were sure they hadn't seen us but, more likely, smelt our humanness amidst the plants and soils and become nervous. This experience felt completely different to that in Japan. It was not an urban periphery, but a complex and ecologically rich landscape layered with nonhuman life and autonomous growth. The forest, despite being regulated, felt 'wild', unruly, brimming with possibility, a place where one might imagine wild boar belong. And, yet, another encounter a few days later seems more significant. In the evening, walking in the dark from the research institute to my village accommodation, I am jolted from thoughts by a huge, grunting silhouette bursting from a bush metres in front of me. Seconds later, it is followed by another…and another…probably five or six. My heart thumps as I stop, static and dazed, until they have gone. Unlike my experience in the forest, this is unnerving and, quite frankly, scary. They were too close, a disorientating sensation compounded by the near darkness. Gathering myself and continuing to walk home, I felt edgy, a feeling that remained whenever I trod the same path again at night. Among many thoughts, I wondered why 'these' wild boar were not in the verdant, archetypal forest nearby, rather than snuffling in village shrubbery. Once again, my assumptions about wild boar spaces jarred with the reality of their movements, behaviour and desires. Story Three-In the maize July 2015, Romania. I was working on another conservation project, one that involved walking day after day through the eastern Carpathians, primarily looking for wolf scat on long transects in valleys and along ridges. The mountains have steep valley slopes with deeply rutted forestry tracks from heavy forest machinery. Summer transhumance brings shepherds, their flocks and sheepdogs into the mountains, living alongside permanent nonhuman lives, including wolves and bears. Walking, we regularly pass raspberry scented bear splats and, occasionally, the putrid scat of wolves, precariously located on tussocks and rocks. Amongst other matter, these occasionally revealed the bone, skin and bristles of wild boar, another omnipresent actant in these mountain assemblages. We sleep in a cabin, up a valley and across a stream from some ruined buildings and structures that speak of a different economic time, perhaps one that was more 'domesticated'. Once there had been a small village and community, though the inhabitants were encouraged to move due to regular flooding. Only one person remains, an old farmer, owner of a smallholding with some chickens, a tiny orchard and crops. He had refused to move, I am told, because the valley is part of who he is-it is his life. From him and us on opposite sides of the river, there are no more dwellings or settlements up the valley, just one or two rusted trailers that house seasonal foresters. One night, I am startled upright in my bed. I hear something. And again. Two gunshots, then a third, followed by some strangled cries. Perturbed, my colleagues and I go downstairs and peer through the darkness to Dimitri's farm, a light faintly flickering. Silence. The following day, we go over and are relieved to see him at his How is such insecurity governed? This thesis, then, presents a fragment of the story of (re)introduced 'boar' in England. 1.2 (Re)introducing UK boar Until the 1980s, boar had been dislocated from the British Isles for multiple centuries (Goulding 2003). Around this time, ecologically destructive EU agricultural policies meant grants were shifted to encourage the diversification of farms and engagement in 'unconventional enterprises' (Ilbery 1991). Amongst these included keeping rare breeds and novel livestock, a shift that led to a 'wilding' of farm space and introduced a range of incongruous animals to the UK, such as llamas, bison and ostriches, as well as some that were more uncanny, namely, boar (Booth 1995). As they returned to farms, almost contiguously, they began eluding them. From 1982/83-2009/10, there were 36 'recorded' incidents of boar escaping or being released in England (Figure 1) (Wilson 2014). These unsanctioned and unexpected events occurred through multiple, relational agencies: sometimes accidentally due to meagre farm infrastructure and inclement weather; at other times through furtive, intentional releases by activists and farmers; or else during numerous other, vaguely documented circumstances (Goulding 2003; Wilson 2014). 3 Here, there are two terms to clarify. From this point onwards I generally refer to 'boar' rather than the common name 'wild boar'. Firstly, this minimises when discussing contested moral categories such as wild/wildness, feral/ferality, hybridity/purity etc. Referring to 'boar', I feel, emphasises the ambiguity bound up in these ontological debates which is an important theme in this thesis. Secondly, many research participants referred to 'boar' and this is also how I referred to them with my supervisors. There is, of course, a gendered element to the term. Therefore, when I refer to 'boar' it is at a species scale, otherwise, I use the term 'sow' (to refer to females) or 'male boar' when distinguishing individuals. Furthermore, I use brackets throughout for '(re)introduction'. This, similarly, highlights the ontological ambiguity of boar, their contemporary origins, and whether they are a returning or newly arriving population of animals. Wynne-Jones 2019). It is, in other words, relational and reflexive (Prior and Ward 2016). Though diverse, rewilding practices might be broadly characterised as performing: process[es] of (re)introducing or restoring wild organisms and/or ecological processes to ecosystems where such organisms and processes are either missing or are 'dysfunctional'" (Prior and Brady 2017, p.34) 5 This understanding of nonhuman nature as processual has emerged from evolving ecological knowledges that have highlighted the fluid and dynamic interconnectedness of ecosystems (Lindenmayer et al. 2008; Manning et al. 2009). These have problematised earlier assumptions that ecological stability and balance is desirable, and disturbance and flux are problematic (Wallington et al. 2005). Critically, rewilding is argued to be distinguishable from other forms of ecological restoration in its foregrounding of more-than-human 'autonomy' and 'selfsustenance', whether at ecosystem, species or individual scales (Prior and Ward 2016). In other words, the objective is to (gradually) reduce human intervention and, where possible, open up time and space for "autonomous biotic and abiotic agents and processes" to "co-produc[e]…surprising ecological futures" (ibid, p. 133-134). Such ontological change not only necessitates the (re)creation of "coherent ecological spatial configuration[s]" (Lorimer et al. 2015, p. 44) allowing for multiple forms of 'connectivity' (Hodgetts 2018), but would also appear to challenge and unsettle established human-nonhuman relations and modes of (b)ordering wild life. 5 An increasing number of papers offer definitions and typologies of rewilding, often...
New Alphabet School, 2022
In this critical text, the four authors encourage the reader to think through the categorical dif... more In this critical text, the four authors encourage the reader to think through the categorical differences of wild, feral and domestic with the help of pigs. Putting forth three case studies of environments that have humans co-existing (or trying to) with pigs, the authors guide us to rethink and relearn our anthropocentric ethics through a feral lens.
Human Dimensions of Wildlife, 2022
Frontiers in Conservation Science
By considering the emergence and threat of African Swine Fever (ASF) in Europe, this paper demons... more By considering the emergence and threat of African Swine Fever (ASF) in Europe, this paper demonstrates the growing role of veterinary rationales in reframing contemporary human-wild boar coexistence. Through comparative ethnographies of human-wild boar relations in the Czech Republic, Spain and England, it shows that coexistence is not a predictable and steady process but is also demarked by points of radical change in form, course and atmosphere. Such moments, or wild boar events, can lead to the (re-)formation or magnified influence of certain discourses, practices and power relations in determining strategies of bio-governance. Specifically, this paper highlights how the spread of ASF in Europe has accelerated an already ongoing process of veterinarization, understood as the growing prominence of veterinary sciences in the mediation and reorganization of contemporary socioecologies. This example highlights how veterinary logics increasingly influence localized human-wildlife rel...
Frontiers in Conservation Science, 2021
By considering the emergence and threat of African Swine Fever (ASF) in Europe, this paper demons... more By considering the emergence and threat of African Swine Fever (ASF) in Europe, this paper demonstrates the growing role of veterinary rationales in reframing contemporary human-wild boar coexistence. Through comparative ethnographies of human-wild boar relations in the Czech Republic, Spain and England, it shows that coexistence is not a predictable and steady process but is also demarked by points of radical change in form, course and atmosphere. Such moments, or wild boar events, can lead to the (re-)formation or magnified influence of certain discourses, practices and power relations in determining strategies of bio-governance. Specifically, this paper highlights how the spread of ASF in Europe has accelerated an already ongoing process of veterinarization, understood as the growing prominence of veterinary sciences in the mediation and reorganization of contemporary socioecologies. This example highlights how veterinary logics increasingly influence localized human-wildlife relations and, through analogous practices of biosecurity and control, also connect different places and geographic contexts.
Conservation and Society
Special Section Introduction
Conservation and Society
This is t h e a u t h o r's v e r sio n of a w o r k t h a t w a s s u b mi t t e d t o / a c c e... more This is t h e a u t h o r's v e r sio n of a w o r k t h a t w a s s u b mi t t e d t o / a c c e p t e d fo r p u blic a tio n. Cit a tio n fo r fin al p u blis h e d ve r sio n: O' M a h o ny, Kie r o n 2 0 2 0. Bl u r ri n g b o u n d a ri e s: F e r al r e wil di n g, bio s e c u ri ty a n d c o n t e s t e d wil d b o a r b elo n gi n g in E n gl a n d. Co n s e r v a tio n a n d S o ci e ty 1 8 (2) , p p.
Society & Animals, 2018
This paper outlines the fieldwork methods utilized by ecologists in (re)presenting wolves in Roma... more This paper outlines the fieldwork methods utilized by ecologists in (re)presenting wolves in Romania. By revealing the processes and performances of this aspect of wildlife conservation, the paper highlights the complex more-than-human assemblages that make up wolf ecology. It briefly discusses the waysHAS(Human-Animal Studies) and the social sciences have addressed conservation and unpacked the oft obscured hinterland of bodies and technologies. It then blends field stories and ethnographic narrative to emphasize the multi-sensory techniques employed in non-invasive wolf research. By using this novel case, the paper contextualizes the significance of concepts such as becoming, affect, and attunement in creating partial affinities between researchers and wildlife. It argues that these contribute to an emplaced knowledge that allows practices to adapt to contingencies in field. This is important when modern, remote technologies aimed at minimizing effort in the field are seen to be a...
Society & Animals, 2018
This paper outlines the fieldwork methods utilized by ecologists in (re)presenting wolves in Roma... more This paper outlines the fieldwork methods utilized by ecologists in (re)presenting wolves in Romania. By revealing the processes and performances of this aspect of wildlife conservation, the paper highlights the complex more-than-human assemblages that make up wolf ecology. It briefly discusses the ways HAS (Human-Animal Studies) and the social sciences have addressed conservation and unpacked the oft obscured hinterland of bodies and technologies. It then blends field stories and ethnographic narrative to emphasize the multi-sensory techniques employed in non-invasive wolf research. By using this novel case, the paper contextualizes the significance of concepts such as becoming, affect, and attunement in creating partial affinities between researchers and wildlife. It argues that these contribute to an emplaced knowledge that allows practices to adapt to contingencies in field. This is important when modern , remote technologies aimed at minimizing effort in the field are seen to be a panacea for monitoring elusive wildlife.
Unofficially released wild boar have been changing the physical and political landscape of the Fo... more Unofficially released wild boar have been changing the physical and political landscape of the Forest of Dean for over 10 years. Changing local attitudes and policy developments during this time may have pointers for official reintroductions and rewilding projects.
A soft engineering project to manage tidal ingress and outflow through a saltmarsh area at Falkeh... more A soft engineering project to manage tidal ingress and outflow through a saltmarsh area at Falkeham on the Deben Estuary in Suffolk, to control erosion and promote siltation. Conducted over a two year period form 2011, completed December 2013.
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Papers by Kieran O'Mahony