Centering British Columbia's Wolf Cull in the Political-Economy of Extraction

Keywords: Political Ecology, Ecological Management, Science Studies, Conservation, Caribou
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 18

Abstract

Over the past decade it’s become increasingly clear that the survival of British Columbia’s endangered Woodland caribou population is incompatible with continued oil and gas extraction (Hebblewhite 2017). In what some have called a last-ditch effort, the provincial government has invested a significant amount of capital and resources into a highly contested solution to the caribou problem: wolf-culling. This paper centers the cull as a focal point to explore how state-driven ecological solution-making is shaped by the tension of policy commitments to conservation on one hand, and material commitments to extraction on the other. Using a science studies approach it asks how wolf-culling is sustained and enacted as a dominant solution to the caribou extinction crisis, despite strong contestation from a variety of actors and it's inability to remediate the systemic drivers of defaunation. Using interviews, corporate and policy data, and critical GIS based methods, this work contributes to the literature that interrogates the relationship between environmental knowledge production and the political-economy of extraction, particularly fossil fuel development (Forsyth 1996, Lave 2012, Kama 2019). Lastly, this research explores the potential for theorizing ecological management strategies that emerge from this particular juncture as a distinct form of enabling condition for future extraction.