Wildlife as an affective multiplicity: Approaching Deleuzo–Guattarian pack-animals

Abstract

Our study explores the ways, in which humans living and working in national parks, encounter, conceive and think about wild animals. The study is framed through the lens of Deleuzo–Guattarian concepts, notably wildlife as ‘affective multiplicities’ and ‘pack-animals’. Through ethnographic exploration in Latvian national parks, we uncover a spectrum of human responses to wildlife, from affectionate engagements to conflicts arising from conservation and livelihood practices. Our findings highlight the critical role of affective relationality and multiplicity in understanding human–wildlife coexistence. It suggests that Deleuzo–Guattarian pack-animal category offer a valuable framework for discussing coexistence, urging more research to deepen understanding of affective human–wildlife relations. This research underscores the importance of considering affective encounters and the multiplicity of wildlife in conservation and management practices, proposing a nuanced approach to human–wildlife coexistence that embraces ecological complexity and the myriad forms of life within nature.

Introduction

The question of how to live with wildlife in the Anthropocene, notably in multi-use landscapes, is gaining increasing prominence in both public discourses and academic debates (Conover and Conover, 2022; Descola, 2014; Fiasco and Massarella, 2022; IUCN, 2023; Linnell et al., 2015; Pooley, 2021). But the question is not only about sharing a landscape with wild animals, ¹ but also about acknowledging wildlife itself – its broader ecologies and networks beyond-only-human relations (Hovorka, 2018). Moreover, it involves becoming more aware of the non-human side of human–wildlife relations (Gibbs, 2020; Goumas et al., 2020), as well as considering its place in conservation within post-humanist biopolitics (Castree and Nash, 2006; Lorimer, 2015). To reimagine human and non-human relations and explore alternate conservation strategies, scholars working in conservation (e.g. Lorimer, 2015; Singh, 2018) advocate for embracing the potential that is embedded in affective relations between humans and non-humans. Recent scholarship in animal geographies attests to the exploration of questions pertaining to human–wildlife encounters and affective learning (Gibbs, 2020; Hovorka, 2018). For instance, Boonman-Berson et al. (2019), based on their research into wild boar management in the Netherlands, propose a novel multi-natural approach to wildlife management – one rooted not in control but on balancing the needs of different species and maintaining openness to change. Similarly, derived from their study of human–bear relations in Bulgaria, Toncheva and Fletcher (2022: 19) posit that peaceful cohabitation between humans and other non-human organisms arises through mutual learning and adaptation. They advocate for humans to collectively decide how to treat non-humans, ‘as respectfully and responsibly as we can’. In contributing to these debates, particularly addressing the treatment of wild animals, we will employ Deleuze and Guattari's (1987) ecologically informed perspective on the affective multiplicity of pack-animals.

Deleuze and Guattari (1987: 240–241) outline three modalities through which non-human animals are framed: Oedipal animals, State animals, and demonic pack-animals. The first kind – Oedipal animals – are ‘individuated animals, family pets, sentimental’, possessing unique histories akin to Freudian animals. The second kind, Jungian animals, encompasses archetypical creatures defined by characteristics, attributes, genus, classification or their treatment in grand divine myths. Finally, the modality in which Deleuze and Guattari are most interested are demonic animals, ‘pack or affect animals that form a multiplicity, a becoming, a population, a tale’. It is noteworthy that animals, including humans, are characterised less by abstract notions of genus or species and more by their capacity for being affected, manifesting a power of acting and a power of being acted upon (Deleuze, 1988). Crucially, these modalities do not represent fixed or intrinsic characteristics of the animals themselves, but rather emerge from the affective capacities that arise through specific encounters and relational contexts. As emphasised by Deleuze and Guattari (1987: 241), ‘there is always the possibility that a given animal … will be treated as a pet … it is also possible for any animal to be treated in the mode of the pack or swarm …’. These framings represent the three possible ways animals can be treated, delineating modes of relating to animals or, succinctly, how animals are ‘constituted in relation to humans’ (Iveson, 2013: 35; see also Bednarek, 2017). This conceptual framework finds validation in a study on the reintroduction of bison in Pape Nature Park, Latvia (Zariņa et al., 2022), illustrating how human production of bison (framed into three modalities) hinges on power dynamics and control in our interactions with other species (see also Toncheva and Fletcher, 2022).

Drawing inspiration from the Deleuzo–Guattarian perspective on these animal modalities, we address questions to understand affective relationality between humans and wildlife: How do people living and working in national parks encounter and treat wild animals? How does this affect their acknowledgement and understanding of wildlife's multiplicities and broader ecologies amid the changing landscape of conservation? To delve into this, we position the Deleuzo–Guattarian notion of pack-animals as a touchstone in human–wildlife relations, exploring it alongside the concepts of multiplicity and affect to frame an approach envisioning wildlife as an affective multiplicity. Our research emphasises the voices and experiences of local residents, highlighting the need to engage with lived realities to deepen theoretical discussions on human–wildlife coexistence and apply Deleuze and Guattari's concepts to the everyday interactions within national parks.

First, we draw on the idea of pack-animals in Deleuze and Guattari's (1987) non-human animal modalities and the scholarly work on affects and science studies to underpin an approach to human–wildlife affective relations, which is understood here as the complexity of affects that wildlife has on humans and vice versa. This implies that there is no single or universal way of understanding the relations between humans and wild animals (Hovorka, 2019), but rather a range of possible affects and intensities that vary across individuals, groups, contexts and species. With this, we contribute to debates in recent critical conservation scholarship (e.g. Büscher and Fletcher, 2020; Lorimer, 2015), which calls for new ontologies recognising the agency and relationality of wildlife as essential to understanding coexistence and advancing conservation practices. In our fieldwork, we aimed to explore how locals articulate their experiences with wildlife, often through distinctions of species and genus. These distinctions, however, go beyond simple biological classifications; they act as affective framings, shaped by personal and cultural histories, lived encounters and the emotional weight these interactions carry. By focusing on these lived, affective encounters, we explore the different ways wild animals are constituted within the shared landscapes of national parks, revealing how human and non-human beings continuously affect one another in dynamic and contingent ways. Finally, we discuss how pack-animals’ multiplicities and affective presences evoke the thinking of ‘zones of proximity’, subsequently reflecting on two disclosed modes of human–wildlife coexistence. We end by considering the significance of affective relationality between humans and wild animals and offer closing reflections on the complexities and possibilities inherent in these relations.

Theoretical framework: Pack-animals, multiplicity and affect

Approaching pack-animals and their multiplicities

For Deleuze and Guattari, the modality of pack-animals is not about zoological classification or the sociality of animals, for example, their organisation into groups (packs or herds) or even ‘what for Deleuze and Guattari constitutes the reality of non-human animals’ (Iveson, 2013: 35). Demonic pack-animals represent the idea of human–animal relations founded on multiplicity, affinity and alliances (Caesar, 2009). And the ‘demonic’, as Beaulieu (2011: 77) explains, refers not to being devilish or ‘evil spirited’ but to the Greek sense of daïmon, which describes a presence that bridges the living realm and a higher, immanent world that, according to Deleuze and Guattari, ‘is made up of inorganic life, affects and impersonal forces’.

Pack-animals are not directly translatable as wild animals. Caesar (2009: 143) writes that the concept of pack-animals gives us the idea behind ‘the understanding of our intuitive characterization of “wild” animals: most abide apart from us as multiplicities, in packs’. Furthermore, pack-animals are not necessarily a plural modality. For Deleuze and Guattari (1987: 239) the singular animal is already a pack: ‘We do not wish to say that certain animals live in packs … What we are saying is that every animal is fundamentally a band, a pack’. Iveson (2013: 36) rephrases this as, ‘[e]very animal is a pack then, but not every animal is treated as a pack’. In being treated as an Oedipal or State animal, it is harder to discover the actual degree of multiplicity that an animal contains and the being-pack in an animal is, then, rendered completely ‘virtual’. On the contrary, animals constituted as demonic pack-animals retain their ‘actuality’ and ‘proper’ way of being and align with the essential ‘reality’ of animals. ‘Yes, any animal is or can be a pack, but to varying degrees of vocation that make it easier or harder to discover the multiplicity, or multiplicity-grade, an animal contains’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 241). It is precisely this human perception of the animal's ‘vocation’ and preconceptions about the roles particular animals have to assume that keeps them wild and real to their inherent nature; and as Iveson (2013: 36) contends, ‘that keeps them at the greatest distance both from their domestication by way of ‘petty’ human ‘sentimentality’ and from the reduction to state characteristics’. Thus, the very assumption of the ‘wildness’ of an animal is that which allows us to discover the actual and virtual multiplicity that an animal contains.

The concept of multiplicity, which Roffe (2010) in Parr's Deleuze Dictionary defines as arguably Deleuze's the most important and the most difficult concept to grasp, is indeed complex, because of the diverse contexts in which Deleuze puts it into use; and we certainly cannot do it justice here. Nevertheless, we will employ the concept of multiplicity in relation to the Deleuze and Guattari's pack-animals’ modality to explore human relations to wildlife at the level of the singular animal, the population and the animals’ milieu. The fascination with a solitary demonic pack-animal for Deleuze and Guattari, as Beaulieu (2011: 78) writes, stems from their ability to ‘make up a pack while being filled with a multiplicity of affects’. Indeed, the concept of multiplicity, as a substantive form, is linked to Deleuze's singular perspective on the object's individuation. It is not a fragmented part of some greater whole (Roffe, 2010), nor can it be defined by fixed identities or laws or a reference to any prior unity. Rather, it is the way how purely differential elements come to exist in the present. A multiplicity, then, is a way to experience, for example, how a bark beetle acts as an ecological engineer by managing dead trees in a natural forest (endemic level), as well as how it triggers an epidemic (an outbreak), ultimately leading to the destruction of tree plantations and altering the entire forest. The differential elements that contribute to these diverse intensities are composition of tree genera and stand structure, the thickness of bark and tree diameter, the air temperature and climatic disturbances, the existence of bark beetles’ natural enemies (predators, parasites and pathogens), their association with other microorganisms like fungi and bacteria and the degree of tree defences (chemical, anatomical and physiological) (see Hlásny et al., 2019). The forces inherent in these aforementioned intensive elements are the virtual multiplicity, which appears in pure duration and which cannot be reduced to numbers (Deleuze, 2011). As Roffe (2010: 182), notes, ‘virtual multiplicity forms something like the real openness to change that inheres in every particular situation’. These forces of openness mutually affect each other determining, for example, the outbreak or the level of the endemic state of the bark beetle's multiplicity; that is, the actual multiplicity that can be described by its exteriority, quantitative differentiation and by the difference in degree (Deleuze, 1991). In other words, virtuality actualises into specific spatial features and thus the virtual multiplicity is as real as the realm of spatial identities and differences that we habitually experience (May, 2008). Depending on our capacity for being affected, we can assess, measure and map the intensities of bark beetles or those of wolves, beavers, wild boars or corncrakes. Actual multiplicity is always a discontinuous state, changing across the space and creating heterogeneity, affecting individuals of other species, including humans and contributing to the larger ecological dynamics of affected habitats.

The affective presence of pack-animals

Understanding pack-animals’ multiplicities necessitates moving beyond simplistic categorisations or fixed identities. Thinking and recognition of them is achieved through affective encounters with wild animals, through sighting animals in their milieu, through learning about their territory-making, observing their behaviour and its impacts on other individuals and the environment. In other words, through ‘learning to be affected’ (Latour, 2004), a process whereby one becomes affected by a world that in turn becomes more highly differentiated (Roelvink, 2018), extending into ecological experience and knowledge (Boonman-Berson et al., 2019). Deleuze and Guattari (1987: 240) describe such encounters with the term affect – the incredible feeling of unknown Nature – ‘the effectuation of a power of pack that throws the self into upheaval and makes it reel’. Affection denotes a dynamic relationality between bodies, defining bodies not by form or function but by the affects they can generate (Deleuze, 1988), thus emphasising the transformative potential and highlighting that agency emerges from relationships rather than individuals (Singh, 2018).

Human–wildlife relationships are complicated, not least because of the wild animals ‘we cannot live with’, as Caesar (2009: 143) acknowledges. Naturally, this is because the becoming of wild animals, the pack-animals, takes place at the margins of human society (Zariņa et al., 2022). But there are always zones of proximity or intensity (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987), which allow for a more immediate, intuitive and transformative mode of relating to animals’ presence. And precisely such zones of proximity potentially open up the understanding of the role of wildlife in the environment (Williams, 2009) and the ways of striving towards coexistence with non-human beings. In Deleuze and Guattari's (1987) project, the ‘multiplicity’ or ‘pack’ that lies behind the idea of human–animal relations is constituted through forging alliances with animals, through non-correspondence and de-hierarchised relationships (see also Wisniowska, 2022). This means relations that go beyond mere resemblances, similarities and transcend fixed and predetermined roles. It entails alliances formed through interactions and transformations, through a dynamic process where the actions and reactions of humans and animals influence each other in complex ways.

But pack-animals’ multiplicities and affective encounters quite commonly also bring forth a myriad of conflicts between humans and wildlife, including the generation of negative sensations such as fear and discontent (Lorimer, 2015; Peterson et al., 2010). In human–animal scholarship, these are widely explored as ‘human–wildlife’ conflicts (Messmer, 2000; Pooley et al., 2021). In this regard, a useful concept is ‘affective logics’ that Lorimer (2015) explores in discussing animal charisma, a concept that not only describes how people engage with and feel about wildlife, but also how people act towards wildlife in relation to particular landscapes. For example, Lorimer (2015: 50) contends that farming landscapes ‘involves a specific range of habituated practices, technologies and domesticated plants and animals that can be subsumed to a logic of (re)production – that are useful, edible, resilient, amenable and profitable’.

The disruptive potential of pack-animals in conservation contexts

Human–wildlife relations in large nature conservation areas, like national parks where human communities reside, are far from straightforward. These spaces are shaped by overlapping activities – conservation efforts, hunting, farming, fishing, dwelling, foraging and eco-tourism – that create a web of ‘affective logics’ framing the way humans and wildlife coexist. Hinchliffe (2008) touches on this complexity when discussing ‘presence’ in conservation, which involves not just the physical existence of species but their role as representations of ecological ideals. In Deleuze and Guattari's terms these are State animals – beings defined by their status and scientific value, representing mainstream conservation's tendency towards fixed categories and identities. Thus, there are two sides to this problem of ‘presence’. On the one hand, the affective logics that permeate human–wildlife relations across these overlapping territorialities and animalscapes that are very much dependent on human discourses – be it biodiversity or species conservation or personal livelihoods or collectively desired spaces of recreation. And, exactly in such territorialities, the corresponding relations are imagined and actualised. For example, humans as exerting dominance and control over wolves or beavers due to their advanced technology and social structures or by reintroducing red deer to national parks as both an ecologically significant and culturally valuable species. But, such hierarchical powers of domination, as Beaulieu (2011) notes, are evidently at the lowest degree of affectability. On the other hand, these territorialities through spontaneous, affective encounters reveal cracks where new ways of relation emerge – where wildlife seen as pack-animals, acts through dynamic, ever-changing interactions. Park rangers, hunters and even casual foragers experience these moments, where wildlife is not a static ‘object’ or a representative of a beforehand defined category but a presence that disrupts and redefines boundaries through its modes of expansion, propagation, occupation and contagion (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987), in other words, through its multiplicities.

In the last decade, several radical approaches have emerged in response to the limitations of contemporary conservation practices. According to Büscher and Fletcher (2020), mainstream conservation, with its focus on protected areas and stakeholder-driven management, has struggled to adapt beyond nature/culture binaries; whereas the idea of ‘new’ or Anthropocene conservation attempts to break these boundaries by embracing the entanglement of human and non-human life and finding potential in their interdependencies. Yet, critical voices argue for deeper ontological shifts. Lorimer's (2015) notion of multi-natural wildlife proposes an understanding of wildlife as a part of multi-species assemblages where each participant – human and non-human alike – carries its agency, roles and intentions, going beyond a human-centric worldview. This framework aligns with a more democratic model of conservation that values relational and affective dimensions, opening space for what Lorimer (2015: 192) describes as ‘a knowledge politics open to epistemological discord, not a politics driven by market power’.

Convivial conservation proposed by Büscher and Fletcher (2020) furthers this shift by advocating for practices that foster co-habitation with biodiversity through bonds of affect and relational presence, rather than economic transactions and utilitarian value. The pack-animal modality, as conceptualised by Deleuze and Guattari, can enrich this framework by challenging the dichotomies set by traditional conservation. It reveals wildlife as a multiplicity – a network where species engage not just through static roles but through shifting behaviours, territorial negotiations and encounters that redefine space and relationships. This conceptual shift invites conservation practices to move away from seeing wildlife as passive subjects to be managed and toward understanding them as active participants in co-shaping their environments. This reorientation can pave the way for more nuanced, reciprocal modes of coexistence that recognise the agency and affective presence of wildlife. As Lorimer (2015: 181) asserts, ‘knowing wildlife is a passionate and embodied practice and these passions for wildlife generate value in conservation’. Through the lens of pack-animal multiplicities, we might see conservation not as an effort to maintain fixed categories but as a dynamic and relational process that embraces the unpredictability and transformative potential inherent in human–wildlife engagements.

Methods and the case studies

Case studies

The case study was conducted in two national parks in Latvia: Gauja National Park (GNP) and Ķemeri National Park (KNP), both situated an hour's drive from Riga, the capital city (Appendix 1). The GNP (918 km²) was established in 1974 during the Soviet era to protect the exceptional landscape of the ancient Gauja River valley, including its Devonian sandstone cliffs, caves and forested ravines. The park was designed to include strict protection reserve zones for unaltered landscapes, as well as various historical sites and wide areas of agrarian farmstead landscape (Schwartz, 2006a). The GNP shares similarities with several other national parks located in Central and Eastern Europe (von Ruschkowski and Mayer, 2011), with a dense population (Appendix 2), intensive agricultural and forestry practices, heritage tourism, ecotourism, resource harvesting and controlled hunting. In recent years, there have been initiatives to re-conceptualise the GNP as a bioregion, with the aim of preserving agricultural activities by transitioning to exclusively organic farming. Thereafter, the GNP adheres to sustainable development or the ‘people and park’, paradigm, which emphasises both biodiversity and local values (Schwartz, 2006a) to address the conflicts between conservation and usage issues.

In contrast, Ķemeri National Park prioritises global biodiversity conservation values with comparatively less emphasis on local usage values and a smaller role for stakeholders in shaping the park's landscape. Situated on flat terrain formed by sea regression stages, the park encompasses forests and diverse wetland landscapes including raised bogs, fens and lagoonal lakes (in total 382 km²). It was established in 1997 through the consolidation of various nature reserves established during the Soviet era. These included the Kaņieris Lake ornithological reserve, the beaver protection reserve, the Great Ķemeri high-raised bog nature reserve and several State Forest micro-reserves of protected bird species habitats of bird species. During the Soviet era, the land surrounding conservation areas was rendered more productive by draining forests, extracting peat and improving grasslands for livestock farming in neighbouring kolkhozes. Settlements (Appendix 3), as well as cultural and historical values, are concentrated in former fishing villages along the coast and in the resort town of Ķemeri. This, consequently, allows more extensive experimentation with the ideas of re-naturalisation and rewilding to uphold the idea of the KNP as one of the few ‘wilderness refuges’ still possible in Latvia.

While certain species, such as lynx or cranes, benefit from targeted conservation measures, general wildlife management across both national parks aligns with standard practices such as hunting regulations, deadwood management and bird protection during nesting periods. However, these measures lack a unique governance approach dedicated to preserving the natural movements and inherent wildness of wildlife. Governance strategies primarily focus on regulating human activities, employing zoning and restricted access (Appendices 2 and 3) to shape how people engage with wildlife. Strict nature reserves limit direct human–wildlife encounters, whereas nature reserve zones, landscape protection areas and neutral zones allow for more frequent and varied interactions.

Interviews and participant observations

A total of 37 interviews (see Appendix 4 for descriptive statistics) were conducted with respondents living in the area of the parks. All participants provided written consent and were supplied with information about the research. To protect participant identities, they were assigned numerical codes based on the order of their interview and the park abbreviation (e.g. KNP01, GNP19). The interviews lasted between 30 and 90 minutes and were primarily held at the respondents’ homes or in their yards. In addition to discussing their land properties and immediate surroundings, interviewees also described places they frequent for activities such as walking, foraging and hunting within the parks. Most respondents’ properties and settlements are located in neutral or landscape protection zones, with some in nature reserve zones, but none resided within the strict nature reserves. The interviews formed part of a wider project focusing on nature discourses in Latvia, with the aim of revealing the attitudes and viewpoints of local stakeholders towards nature's values and practices for conservation. The participants’ perceptions, experiences and conduct towards wildlife encompassed the entire interview, but were more concentrated in the section pertaining to their views and encounters with wild animals. The fieldwork was conducted throughout the period between May 2021 and October 2022. We also took part in pertinent events, such as park-arranged meetings and public discussions concerning nature preservation management plans for both parks.

Analysis

Our analysis began with the close reading of interview transcripts (in Latvian) and setting up code frames (using MaxQDA2022). First, we assigned codes to animals mentioned in the interviews. In the second coding round, we concentrated on identifying patterns in the way locals expressed their thoughts and encounters with animals, categorising them into four interpretative sets of relations: ‘encounters’, ‘conflicts with livelihoods’, ‘practices’ and ‘attitudes/viewpoints towards wild animals’ (general and specific: ‘conservation’ and ‘hunting issues’). Each code frame had a list of sub-codes, revealing the similarities in the ways people relate to animals, with the exception of the ‘encounters’ code frame, which disclosed rather unique experiences (here there are two sub-codes: passionate encounters and distanced observation of animals). The hits of animal-related codes (in total 1215) varied among the interviewees, with an average of 31 in an interview conducted at the GNP (ranging from 7 to 71 mentions) and an average of 34 in an interview at the KNP (from 18 to 61 mentions). Interviewees often shared accounts of animal encounters followed by their opinions on specific animals in various contexts such as population dynamics, conservation status, behaviour, controlled hunting and impact on the environment.

During the interviews, it was evident that respondents articulated their experiences using species or genus distinctions, thus revealing their affective and species-based positionality. This positionality often reflected a form of engagement that combined use-value (Hovorka, 2018) with deeper emotional and relational resonances. Therefore, we structured our analysis accordingly. This approach allowed us to demonstrate how locals value certain species for their utility but engage with them through a multiplicity of emotional and affective encounters. Our analysis focused on the most frequently cited animals (Appendix 5). We excluded species or genera that were mentioned only once or a few times, such as badgers, squirrels, hares, butterflies, wasps, polecats, etc. We conducted further analysis using a MaxQDA Complex Coding Query. We examined the intersection of codes related to ‘animal’ sub-codes and the four sets of coded relations.

Affective framings of species: Relational encounters with wildlife in national parks

The appeal of cervids: The beautiful and devilish ‘deer family’

Roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), affectionately referred to as ‘little doe’ (stirniņas in Latvian), traverse homesteads as familiar yet elusive presences, weaving through spaces that blend human and non-human lives. In Latvia, roe deer are skittish due to generations of hunting, an affective relation that has shaped a particular modality of approach and distance, a balance between proximity and retreat. In the predominantly forested landscape of KNP, where agricultural activity is minimal and most land is state-owned, encounters with roe deer provoke a sense of joy. With little agricultural impact to protect, residents experience these deer not as disruptors but as part of a shared, relational space – a kind of ethnoscape of affection. Here, they echo the Deleuzo–Guattarian concept of ‘Oedipal animals,’ embodying a nurturing, caregiving modality, as residents leave apples out as seasonal offerings and worry over their safety and roaming grounds. Yet, as the multiplicity of roe deer grows in more utilitarian landscapes like the GNP, the dynamics shift. Here, economic value and protective efforts come into play, reconfiguring roe deer as challengers to human territories of productivity.

But there are many beasts, yes. There are just an insane number of roe deer. You can’t grow anything in the garden … not to mention fruit trees and berry bushes. The fact that we sowed 13 furrows of beetroot and harvested only half a bucket … The roe deer are miraculous things. (GNP10)

While roe deer are very often treated with sentimental affection, red deer (Cervus elaphus), known as ‘stately deer’ (staltbriedis), elicit a different kind of affects and are perceived with more reverence as majestic forest creatures. Their presence in herds, especially in GNP's mixed landscapes, produce feelings of awe and admiration, a modality that transforms everyday spaces into encounters with the wild. Some locals describe red deer as embodying a threshold between wild nature and human life, evoking the becoming of ‘modern life amid nature’ (see also Linnell et al., 2015). Their perceived cunning and ability to evade hunters even elevates them to the realm of legend: ‘A great big deer, almost bigger than a tractor, gets up, I don't know what to do. He looked around and went into the woods. And they hunt him all the time, nobody can hunt him down’ (KNP16). Or in the GNP,

But if you get your hands on one, it's already separated from the herd. They roam in packs and they know that in the morning you will go hunting to this specific block. They know. How they know, nobody knows that. They know. (GNP11)

Both national parks, however, differ in terms of human and red deer relations. First, this difference is contingent on the possibility of seeing the animals – the GNP has more diverse landscapes where open spaces mix with forest and mires, while in the KNP red deer roam more in the inaccessible parts of the park – deep forests and on the fringes of bogs and mires. Secondly, for the GNP with its open landscape and relatively dense farmstead settlements, as well as private forestry businesses, red deer are often a cause for human–wildlife conflict (see also Linnell et al., 2015). The intensities of spruce forests and deer, fruit trees and deer, even vegetable gardens and deer, are a source of utter dissatisfaction for many interviewees.

I counted 42 deer next to here and if such a herd of them go through, they would eat everything and you’re already not allowed to plant much, and those devils are eating everything. If you’d stop hunting, you can’t do anything, not a cabbage, not a beet, let alone a spruce tree or a pine tree. (GNP08)

This quotation exemplifies not only the different affective logics discussed by Lorimer (2015), but also how deer become different in the eyes of humans – as affect animals – when they territorialise human-inhabited spaces governed by instrumental rationality.

Wild boar are gone, wild boar are back

Wild boars (Sus scrofa) are considered in the parks’ conservation policy as a valuable part of the local fauna, serving as an important food base for predators and occupying a specific niche within the ecosystem. However, like other artiodactyls, wild boars are subject to population control through hunting when they are seen as overpopulated or when their presence threatens protected habitats. The idea of potential overpopulation is deeply embedded in local thinking, where wild boars are always perceived as a pack, as a multiplicity – there are no isolated individuals; wild boar always are many, carrying a latent sense of danger in both their ever-shifting presence and collective force, as well as the spectre of disease they bring.

Wild boars are indeed animals of intensive presence, visibly marking their territory by ‘ploughing’ the ground as they move through various habitats. Thriving as opportunistic omnivores (Yamamoto, 2017), they would eat nearly everything leaving conspicuous signs of their activities, creating a perceptible impact on the landscape. Although encounters are rare during the daytime due to their nocturnal habits, interviewees frequently mentioned a sense of unease upon seeing freshly ‘ploughed’ areas in forests or meadows, evidence of their nighttime activities. In particular, the wild boars’ intensive uprooting of carefully cultivated meadows led some locals to feel that adapting to life with these animals requires either erecting fences or reconsidering farming altogether. Despite this push for coexistence in the case of national parks, there remains a firmly held belief that wildlife like wild boars should remain within the forested areas rather than intruding upon cultivated land. As one interviewee observed, ‘It's fine for wild boar to be in the forest, but as soon as they creep into that meadow, they unwittingly cause destruction. Unlike other four-legged predators and ungulates, wild boar do not preserve nature. I’m against them’ (KNP07). This demonstrates a deeply rooted discourse of the Latvian ethnoscape: we live and farm close to Nature (Bunkše, 1992; Schwartz, 2006b), yet we must safeguard it from the detrimental effects of wildlife, from its multiplicity-grade.

One or several beavers

‘Today, I caught a beaver in a trap. There! One beaver less in Gauja National Park’ (GNP01). This is how the first interviewee answered the question on the interaction with wildlife in the national park, setting a tone that would recur in later conversations. In the KNP, beavers (Castor fiber) were brought from Voronezh Nature Reserve in the 1950s to recreate a diverse wetland landscape, where beavers serve as a key-stone species. However, paradoxically, in today's bureaucratic conservation narrative – in both parks and more broadly in Latvia – they are viewed as a serious managerial issue, considered ‘problematic wildlife’ (Angelici, 2016) due to their impact on conservation objectives for habitats and human livelihoods. Among interviewees, there is a general agreement that beavers ought to be strictly managed or even extirpated due to the damage they cause to the environment.

Beavers spare nothing. If you must hunt something in a protected area, then please take a shotgun and shoot the beavers out, because they do a lot of damage … We have fenced several trees so that they don’t gnaw them. That can be done, but it is better for the species to go away, back to where it came from. (GNP18)

So, what are they to do? How do they expand and occupy? Beavers, according to the interviews, transform forest into beaver ponds (bebraines, beaverscapes – a term of negative connotation in Latvian), gnaw tree trunks, turning comfortable and walkable nature into a ‘mess’, occasionally interfere with vegetable gardens, damage the drainage system and tear down carefully designed and planted trees. However, locals’ affective relations with beavers are notably corporeal and reactive compared with those involving other wildlife. Many interviewees described their hands-on, affective interference with beavers through actions like tearing down beaver dams, chasing them, setting traps and inviting contract hunters, in other words, fighting back by all means possible.

The beaver, he's … insolent to me. He chewed down my oak tree, I thought I would sentence him to death, but I felt sorry for him. He was so big, so huge … I planted a new oak tree instead. He climbed up and tore it down! I scare .them away, tear them [the dams] down, but they build them again. He builds, I tear, and we do this in circles. (KNP06)

These reactions stem from a value system born during modernist nature transformations, whereby water in landscapes (or Nature, to this end) must be strictly controlled and beavers are the main agents interfering with this order.

Conservation strategies, in both parks, frame beavers in terms of the disruptive impact they have on protected habitats, viewing their activities as obstacles to conservation goals due to flooding, tree felling and alteration of watercourses. Only occasionally is their activity recognised as beneficial for enhancing biodiversity or creating habitats for protected species. In contrast, local affective encounters reveal a more complex relationality, where beavers are seen not merely as agents of disorder but as provocations to human-centred ideas of control complicating the idea of co-habitation. One interviewee, an experienced biologist living in the KNP, offered a counter-perspective, acknowledging the beaver's role in regulating water runoff and enhancing ecological diversity – perspectives that contrast with the dominant view of beaver-altered milieus as ‘savage’ and ‘messy’ spaces. In this context, the beaver's multiplicity as a Deleuzian pack-animal unfolds both as a transformative force in shared landscapes and a provocation to human-imposed boundaries. The tension between these perspectives invites us to rethink wildlife not as entities that disrupt pre-set ecological roles but as agents that continually shape and co-create spaces, provoking a revaluation of human–wildlife relations in protected areas.

The elusive presence of predators

Large predators, in general, are rather rarely discussed (especially in the GNP), let alone directly encountered. Among the most mentioned are foxes and wolves, much more rarely the elusive lynx with which human worlds do not ordinarily intersect. Meanwhile, although brown bears have only recently reclaimed their inherent place in the north-eastern parts of the country, in both parks their potential comeback is only perceived with agitation (see also Sauka, 2022). The presence of the grey wolf (Canis lupus), like ‘howling on the edge of the bog’ (KNP20), is mainly experienced by hobby hunters. The bog – The Great Ķemeri Bog – a place, which a few park's inhabitants designate as the park's true wilderness, is also considered to be a ‘paradise for wolves’ (KNP06). One interviewee recounted an affective moment with what he believed might have been a wolf,

[t]he thing about wolves … one winter I had an acute need to exhaust myself by walking, and I was walking in circles on a forest path in the dark. I had a feeling that a wolf was following me. Every now and then I shone my torch to see whether the wolf's eyes were reflecting back at me or not. For the first time, I had such a feeling of respect. (KNP02)

Therefore, we argue that people acknowledge that in the national park (in this case – the KNP) there exists, in close proximity, a world which can be full of fearful encounters (the unpredictability of swamps and wolves), which must be avoided and respected, but which is a necessity and forms a constitutive part of the park's realm. This echoes another viewpoint expressed by interviewees – a more pragmatic one, whereby there should be wolves. Naturally so, because they prey on ungulates. However, out of fear of their propagation, they must certainly be controlled.

In contrast to few encounters with lynx and wolves, red foxes (Vulpes vulpes), the opportunistic predators, are common visitors in human inhabited landscapes, albeit unwanted ones; and are quite often treated as ‘prototypical thieves’, borrowing the term from Benavides Medina (2020). The interviews reveal that for humans, the multiplicity of foxes elicits unease, which stems from the inherent implications of the presence of this pack-animal, that is, their ability to adapt to human milieu and agency to prey on fowl and pets. Evidently, the fox has transgressed the boundary between wild nature and the urban space, and, apart from other wildlife in the parks, this has been done perpetually through scavenging and territorialising. For many, it is a new human–wildlife realm here, produced by rhizomatic contagion and unnatural participation, ‘She [a fox] walks around the garbage bins … what diseases they are spreading here, I don't know. But there are half-blind foxes wandering around’ (KNP08). Others in the GNP make similar observations,

We have village foxes here. How did it start? Probably one was hit by a car, a lame fox … obviously, it was the mother, and then the next generation, and now in the evening when you happen to feed the rabbits in the dark, you watch, whose two eyes are shining – is it a cat or a fox? … That's a real change when one urbanises. (GNP06)

Although many interviewees are indifferent to foxes, seeing them only now and then, those with fowl, rabbits or pets nurture more vigilant, ‘corresponding’ relations to safeguard their animals.

Fascinating birds

When asked about the value of the natural environment around them, interviewees frequently refer to birds, and, in particular, species or genera of protected birds they have observed. This is partly because the conservation discourse surrounding endangered bird species is very influential in the politics and practice of protected habitats (e.g. Portaccio et al., 2023; Sharma and Kreye, 2021). It is also due to their place in folk culture (Robinson, 2019), and the aesthetic charisma inherent in their colours, flight, songs and calls (Bonta, 2010). Two distinct ways of encountering birds emerged from the interviews when exploring human–bird relations: the sighting of birds themselves, their habitats, and observing the dynamics of their populations (echoing the Deleuzo–Guattarian State animal framing) and the affective encounters with birds and their milieu. The former, which prevail in the stories of locals, concern affective encounters with animals of status, validating conservation efforts; but also, the opposite – antagonistic – affects and actions. Whereas the latter, disclosed only in a few interviews, could be described in the words of Bonta (2010) as the attunement to birds, and moreover, the attunement to landscape, the becoming-landscape.

In Latvia, a specific conservation regulation exists in the form of micro-reserves for protected bird species. These reserves dictate that any activity that goes against the objectives of the micro-reserve, including forestry activities, is prohibited. This can be a significant hardship for those whose livelihoods depend on the forest industry, primarily through timber, as they view the compensation policy as unfair when it comes to mitigating their economic losses, setting specific affective logics for these livelihood spaces. Although nobody mentioned any direct physical interference with the habitats of ‘unwanted’ bird species on their properties (e.g. destruction of nests or disturbance during the nesting season), apprehension of the State animal's power over people's livelihoods was disturbingly evident. Curiously, though, there was a story, told after the interview officially ended, that occasionally, as a child, an interviewee (GNP17) was commanded by his mother to go out in the forest to play a clarinet to scare off the lesser spotted eagle, a key species of micro-reserves in Latvia, due to the discovery of an eagle's nest on their property. What a reciprocally intensive way to mark a territory! Regardless of the outcome of this practice (which is not known to us), this interplay showcases a unique alliance or pack of non-corresponding relations, where both sides are dynamic agents contributing to the ongoing battle over a territory.

However, there are also different perspectives that contradict the rejection of micro-reserves: ones that invoke, as Schwartz (2006b) has put it, the Western values of nature as wilderness. This holds the idea of separation between nature and man, a nature without disturbance, which can be achieved by means of protection as a moral framing, in which humans are mere observers. ‘Of course, we would love to have a micro-reserve for the three-toed woodpecker near here, but … we haven’t found it just yet. But we have seen it’ (GNP05). Concerns about the dynamics of bird populations, their habitats and possible disturbances are prevalent throughout many interviews. These concerns include the impact of land use changes on open spaces and habitat diversity, the declining frog population as a food source for storks, regulatory uncertainties regarding the conservation of corncrake habitats and the need for bird sanctuaries. ‘In terms of nature values, there's the neighbouring Kaņieris Lake. Kaņieris is the only lake where no birds are shot. The birds appreciate this, the birds are much calmer’ (KNP02). Human relationships with birds are rarely characterised by conflict, on the contrary, many people would voluntarily adjust their management activities (cutting trees or mowing grasslands) to comply, for example, with the birds’ needs during the nesting season. Arguably, to a great extent, this concern lies precisely at the centre of the human–bird relationship in both national parks, but there is also wariness about the habitats of birds, reinforced by discursive elements from conservation politics and actions (after all, the KNP was established primarily for the conservation of specific bird species) and locals’ knowledge. As for the latter, drawing on their experience, several interviewees questioned the actual efficiency of conservation measures, pointing out that humans have long lived together with birds and that human stewardship only enriches their diversity.

Until I started to look after my own forest ten years ago, there were no birds, no interesting birds. But now they are starting to live there, so the way I look at these things is that if a man stewards together with nature, I think the ecosystem is better and richer than if you do nothing. (KNP18)

This echoes Schwarz's (2006b: 62) findings affirming the powerful notion of ‘the labouring Latvian saimnieks as an innately good steward of nature’, which blends the realms between man and wild nature, yet still retains its particular affective logics of a rational landscape oriented towards productivity.

Apart from the caring relationships with birds, which are undoubtedly ambiguous – from poetic and sentimental to very practical, some of the stories reveal the affective relationality with nature through the attunement to birds and the milieus of birds. An interviewee, a birder, who relocated to the KNP to live surrounded by Nature, passionately discloses his fascination with birds as one born of care, but also as a way of experiencing and understanding the rhythms of nature.

Living in nature is not cheap, but it is a privilege. It means not waiting for the seasons according to the calendar, but knowing that when the first owl hoots, February is coming to an end, when the woodcocks start flying, March is coming to an end and when cranes start calling, … and then a cuckoo, it's different and then corncrakes call, then I can sit out here and listen to her calling … It is hard to describe. (KNP06)

Although it is the subject of only minor attention among interviewees, there is one bird species that disturbs their desired relations with birds. This is the great cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo), which has been demonised and gunned down in Europe for at least five hundred years (King, 2013). In Latvia, the species have re-populated in recent decades due to the availability of undisturbed wetlands allocated for migratory bird conservation. The piscivorous cormorants, according to Carss (2022), are responsible for one of the most virulent environmental conflicts in Europe: the effect on fisheries and impact on habitats via the deposition of cormorant guano, which is of great concern for nature conservation in particular. Cormorants affect by their expansion and occupation; they have expressive modes of marking their territory, called ‘the dead zones’. ‘Thank God, there are no cormorants!’ (GNP13), discussing the diversity of birds, exclaims one of the farmers in the GNP. In contrast, in the KNP, two cormorant colonies have been spotted:

they have been usurping here and left a battlefield behind them. These white, empty splinters, the fallen trees, the dead zone, all this damage is caused by cormorants … That's one of the biggest problems now. I mean it's not just for the sake of Lake Kaņieris, it's the aroma and the stink for the people that live nearby. (KNP13)

In the few documented views of local stakeholders, this mirrors the acknowledgement of the existence of good and bad nature, or even ugly and beautiful nature, very similar to the disturbing impacts of the intensities of beavers, signifying that nothing good comes out of nature, when it takes its own course, ‘We call it the savageness of nature’ (KNP20).

The good beetle, the bad beetle

Affective sentiments towards wood dwelling insects mentioned in the interviews also revolve around terms like primordiality and savageness. This draws attention away from other insects – mosquitoes, ticks, ants, bees, gadflies, grasshoppers and spiders – that are mentioned only occasionally. This is due to the unprecedented intensities of wood dwelling insects in the parks’ forests, ‘the bark beetle madness’ (GNP09), which invoke a profound discontent about changes in the course of nature conservation: the new measures to enhance biodiversity by leaving deadwood in forests and bureaucratic procedures to stop insect attacks on spruce tree forests. With these specific insect species, it is a very similar story to that of many other wildlife species, which are disliked largely because of how they engage with the environment, how they interfere with and change habitual landscapes. For the Latvian saimnieks, even one who lives in a national park, the idea of ‘valuing insects above human needs’ (KNP18) is ungraspable. An interviewee in the KNP, who is certain that insects have no place in forests, refers to the stories of her grandmother's childhood, who ‘after storms would go to rake all the branches in the forest. Not a single branch was allowed to remain on the ground, so the insects wouldn’t eat the trees’ (KNP17).

In both the GNP and KNP, intensive forestry practices during the 20th century have rendered the ecologies of secondary almost monocultural spruce stands vulnerable to outbreaks of the European spruce bark beetle (Ips typographus). In combination with the new deadwood biodiversity politics and management restrictions, this has transformed these highly appreciated walkable and predictable forests into affectively ‘dangerous’ territory, ‘Our boreal forest has also been badly affected by this invasion, and of course the trees are falling down, it's unsafe, and we haven’t used the trail for four years now’ (GNP09). This territory is also depicted, albeit somewhat dramatically, as ‘futile’ by some of the interviewees – ‘a Fukushima’ or ‘a useless forest, where you can see only misery’ (GNP12). Bark beetles are the animals that contrive to heterogeneity making forests into a spatiotemporal mosaic of clearings and old and middle-age stands (see Hulcr and Abrahams, 2022). Yet these deep forest ecologies and multiplicities are alien to humans who live by modernity's ideas of sanitised forests meant for timber production, recreational walks and pleasant foraging, thus seeing only destruction.

What bothers me the most is that the bark beetle is moving forward, and it doesn’t look neat. Well, of course, nature is not always about beauty, but at the moment the intensity with which the forest is littered with these old trees is just sad. (GNP13)

The multiplicities of bark beetles have different temporal variations and spatialities as documented in the observations of the interviewees. Forest owners in particular are keenly aware of the beginnings of the colonisation of the beetles in their properties and elsewhere in their surroundings. They predict larger outbreaks and mass-attacks on healthy trees once their populations are high and are calling for immediate action. Yet, such opinions are not shared by all the interviewed stakeholders – some view this as a necessary trigger for a transition to naturalising overmanaged park forests, especially in the GNP. It is as if, with the intensities of insects, much more affectively so than in the case of relations with other animals, the wild face of nature is unfurling. And the ‘savageness’ created by (and for) these swarming but unseeable creatures is simply incomprehensible: ‘There ought to be an educational poster. This is a boreal forest, how should we learn to see what's there? How should we look for those beetles? It just seems neglected. I don’t know if it's the urbanite's eyes or what, but it is hard to see. One must do something educational about it, yeah, about this savageness’ (GNP13). And therefore, for many, this wilderness with deadwoods is hideous: ‘it is savage … nobody likes to go there or to look at it’ (GNP11).

Four aspects of human experience of encountering wild animals

Human–wildlife affective relationality as it is disclosed in the stories of local residents of Latvian national parks is constituted by multi-faceted dimensions, which are inextricably connected in ways that makes them hard to address separately. Summarising and working through these dimensions, four important aspects unfold. First, there are unique and passionate stories of sighting and listening to, running into or observing wild animals. These stories contain many accounts of affections that can be described, according to Deleuze (1988: 27), as ‘a power of being acted upon’. They elicit joy and form often pleasurable and awesome experiences, describing the positivity of sharing everyday space with wildlife. Such wild animals, especially those that do not pose an immediate threat or discomfort to humans, are frequently perceived as ‘cute’, contributing to the pleasant and familiar human–wildlife ethnoscape. Among these, charismatic wildlife species in Latvia, including roe deer, red deer and foxes, predominate. Occasionally, hares, badgers, squirrels, hedgehogs and various bird species also become the subjects of such affection. However, such encounters also manifest rather romanticised attachment to the wild (Lorimer, 2007), fitting into the Deleuzo–Guattarian framing of Oedipal animals. Complementary to this emotional affection is the commitment to the well-being of these animals and their habitats, often manifesting in the interviews as an affective state. Encounters that go beyond common experiences also evoke reverence and profound respect towards wildlife – usually for majestic, protected or seldom-seen charismatic species, such as lynx, wolves, moose or the black stork. However, this reverence is often directed towards the species as a whole rather than a specific individual animal, aligning with Deleuzo–Guattarian ‘archetypical’ animal modality. This implies the propensity to treat wildlife as visitors in human-inhabited landscapes focusing on their common behaviours and characteristics, simultaneously fostering a tendency to overlook their place in the historically evolved social-ecological systems.

Secondly, there are affective encounters with the milieus of animals and their placemaking (Baldwin, 2020) often without the visible presence of an animal itself. The emotions elicited by articulating these affective milieus are frequently manifested as an aching dislike due to the disruption of carefully designed and stewarded landscapes. These affects, following Spinoza-Deleuze lineage (Deleuze, 1988: 27), are rather filled with actions, which stem from the individual's essence. For example, changed management practices or control measures implemented through hunting or avoiding walking through the milieus of wildlife. Among these encounters, the multiplicities of the European beaver, wild boar, red deer and the European spruce bark beetle stand out in particular. Nevertheless, in this context of human–wildlife relations, sentimentality towards animals often wanes and they are treated closer to the idea of pack-animals, as animals real to their inherent nature. Although the interviewees rarely reflect on the variety of their affective reactions or even contradictions in their perception of animals, the way they constitute animals and perceive their relationships with animals is certainly complex and multi-dimensional.

Thirdly, there exists a deeply embedded cognitive perception regarding wild animal species or genera. This perception cannot be solely attributed to individual experiences with wildlife, but seems to be rooted in the discursive values of nature and wildlife's place within it. For most interviewees, the primary concern revolves around the mismanagement of ‘problematic species’, such as bark beetles or beavers and their habitats, alongside the evolving politics and practices of wildlife conservation. These factors contribute to the perception that nature within both parks is becoming unnecessarily wild. For example, the production of deadwood habitats, which operationalise an ecosystem-based approach to wildlife conservation and disclose the multiplicities of various life-forms. However, many argue that such wildness or ‘proximal ecologies and uncommodified wildlife encounters’, as Lorimer (2015: 143) puts it, have no place in the living space of human use value. Two dominant discourses influence these perceptions in Latvia (Schwartz, 2006b). Firstly, agrarian nationalism, which to a certain extent presumes a harmonious coexistence between humans and wildlife, as long as both follow a certain order. For example, the interviewees strongly believe that hunting is a necessary practice to maintain this harmony. And secondly, the globalist biocentric discourse that also addresses the necessity of human–animal coexistence, with one influential idea being the separation of wilderness from the human world.

Closely related to this is the fourth dimension, addressing conservation and management practices that concentrate on wild animals with designated statuses or scientific characteristics and fixed identities – akin to Deleuzo–Guattarian second animal modality. Depending on discursive values, it reveals both satisfaction and dissatisfaction with current habitat and wildlife management principles, protected area establishment and their impact on livelihoods. Responses typically fall within a framework of affective logic and are based on corresponding relations, such as hunting policies for managing overpopulated or ‘problematic species’ and restrictions regarding the conservation efforts for bird habitats. Drawing on these aspects of the human experience with wildlife and the ways they are constituted in relation to humans, there are two avenues we would like to discuss further. The first considers the acknowledgement of wildlife's multiplicities, which evoke thinking of the importance of zones of proximity to wildlife, while the second considers how such zones of proximity are revealed in the observed forms of coexistence.

Affective presence of wild animals and zones of proximity

Deleuze and Guattari write from a position, where Nature is always in proximity, and as Williams (2009: 52) notes, this very proximity, these very zones of intensity that Deleuze and Guattari's project makes visible, are the ones which ‘we are rapidly losing the ability to recognise’. And this recognition does not entail the idea of a natural harmony or the presence of the Good, and is not based on compassion or pity, but on solidarity and being on the lookout for sign-affects that are common to human and non-human beings (Beaulieu, 2011). The findings of our study suggest that such zones of pack-animals’ proximity, filled with impersonal affects (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987), can be found everywhere. And, indeed, they are not necessarily bound to direct encounters with wild animals. Cormorants flying over and dropping fish, hearing the roars of red deer and howling of wolves, coming across wild boar diggings or rotting carcasses, glimpsing a lynx or a corncrake, shed-antler collecting – these distanced presences also open up the awareness of the territorialities of animal and the self. Of course, these affective encounters do not necessarily mean that the becoming-animal or other forms of becoming take place, yet they build up the attunement to landscape, human experience of nature's multiplicities, as well as spatio-temporal knowledge of it. Nevertheless, among those told experiences, we can spot some of the human–animal relations that go beyond mere awe or astonishment, emphatic non-intervention or knowledge building. For instance, the repetitive dance of man and beaver in building and destroying beaver dams. A Man follows his calling not to kill a Beaver, not to exert the technological power over an animal, but to engage in a transformative game relating to the animal's intensive presence. But there are few such stories which could be framed, according to Deleuze and Guattari (1987), as non-corresponding relations. Perhaps this can be explained by the Deleuzian notion, brought up by Goh (2008: 211), that humans, who have entered the realms of the political economy of work and constructions of profitable habitations, and who have left their childhood behind, ‘have not yet learned how to access this realm of interactivity with Nature’. Indeed, the attitudes and actions that result from the affects of pack-animals’ multiplicities are very often reduced to a perpetual concern revolving around the safeguarding of livelihoods and reconstructing damaged property. At the same time, even these stories – perhaps, especially those – acutely evoke the acknowledgement of the demonic nature of animals, their actual and virtual multiplicities. However, this notion is instantaneously negated by calling for extermination and obliteration, thus establishing a distance between calculated conditions rooted in affective logic and Nature's immanence. For many, this distance is cut short by minimising their agricultural and gardening activities according to the logic of ‘it is not worth it’. This is particularly common for re-settlers in national parks who intentionally have chosen to live ‘surrounded by nature’. Despite the fact that here too, traits of preconceived expectations can be spotted, they have a higher degree of openness to the multiplicities of pack-animals and to the idea of dynamic Nature wherein, as Herzogenrath (2008: 1) suggests, ecology is not distinct from Nature, but is coexistent with it.

Towards coexistence with pack-animal multiplicities

Coexistence with wildlife, a transformative concept that in recent years has emerged in the mainstream of conservation scholarship to draw attention away from negativity surrounding human–wildlife conflict, entails focusing on positive relations between humans and wildlife (Fiasco and Massarella, 2022; König et al., 2020). Among the most widely referenced definitions, Fiasco and Massarella (2022) mention two definitions of coexistence. The first, proposed by Frank (2016), views coexistence as satisfied interests for both humans and wildlife or negotiated compromises. The second, proposed by Carter and Linnell (2016: 575), sees coexistence as a dynamic but sustainable state in which humans and large carnivores co-adapt to living in shared landscapes. Amidst these debates on the Western meaning of the concept, Fiasko and Massarella (2022) also highlight a framing rooted in indigenous and local community worldviews. They quote an Indian academic and activist who argues that coexistence is not defined by the separation of humans and nature, but rather by humans being a part of nature. Therefore, the question arises: does living in a national park bring local inhabitants closer to this form of coexistence? Although national parks fall under the concept of wilderness and biodiversity and thereof wildlife's multiplicities, the role of humans and wildlife within them remains ambiguous. This is also noted by Schwartz (2006b), who argues that the tension between the concepts of nature as wilderness or biodiversity and nature as a lived-in landscape of labour or ethnoscape is more acute in national parks than in other protected areas, especially in countries like Latvia. Therefore, it is not surprising that throughout our study, we conceived of two distant forms that can be conceptualised as coexistence with pack-animals and their multiplicities evocative of the tension described by Schwartz (2006b). The first involves a deep care for animals, particularly birds, engaging in responsible action as a form of ecological solidarity (Mathevet et al., 2016) by minimising interference, such as late mowing, reduced gardening and avoiding disturbances during nesting periods. Although these self-reinforcing values and practices would seem to be established through the logics of species conservation, they, in fact, largely stem from affective encounters with animals. These relations are positively charged, with admiration for the beauty of Nature and its subtle ecologies, unless they involve uglifying elements, often referred to as the ‘destruction of nature’, which for many are manifested in the case of the multiplicities of beavers, wild boar, cormorants, bark-beetles. Yet, ‘every animal swept up in its pack or multiplicity has its anomalous … the unequal, the coarse, the rough, the cutting edge of deterritorialization, … position or set of positions in relation to a multiplicity’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 243–244), which means, as long as there is a becoming, there ‘will be instances of treacherous violence of Nature against itself’ (Goh, 2008: 205). This form of human–animal relations could certainly mark the beginning of a form of coexistence, one that aligns with concerns for biodiversity and species protection. However, there is a risk of being trapped in the fantasy of existence of an imagined Nature which can be preserved through values and practices of non-interference and rejection of the anomalous side of wild animals. This would mean living right next to Nature rather than truly engaging with or becoming part of it.

The other observed form of human–wildlife relations in both national parks, potent of elements of coexistence, is exemplified by pragmatic practices of land management, particularly in farming. These practices entail caring for wildlife's spatial and temporal movements and relation-building with their multiplicities. Oftentimes, this is grounded in the opinion that normative regulations and conservation measures, as well as the need for a short-term profit, have obstructed and destroyed nature's balance and alienated humans from it. To restore the balance, to reconnect, Nature must take its course with its Steward – the one who knows the place, who has roots in the land. This also includes ‘reconnecting to nature’ through hunting for wild animals in times of hardship or war, as some have suggested amid the present turbulent times. However, this form of coexistence assigns value to nature primarily based on its utility to people drawing from traditions and local know-how. This perspective resonates with the concerns raised by Linnell et al. (2015) who emphasise the necessity of acknowledging the deep, complex and ancient intertwining of nature and culture in Europe. Such a worldview, on the one hand, has its roots in the Latvian notion of ‘saimnieks’, discussed earlier, which embodies a historical ethos of harmonious coexistence between Man and Nature (for further exploration of this discourse in Schwartz, 2006b). On the other hand, it simply stems from everyday encounters with soil, plants, weather and wildlife, as well as stories of them. In addition, this stance gains its strength in juxtaposition to conservation regulations and measures executed by experts who were described by a local as ‘aliens landing for a moment and then departing’ (KNP05). ‘How can one fall in love with nature if everything is going to be prohibited?’ asked another local rhetorically (GNP06). This described alienation reminds us of the concept of ‘use’, explained by Agamben (2015), and in this case, the impossibility of usage with its symbolic place in the museum. National parks with their idea of nature have docilely been withdrawn into ‘the separate dimension to which what was once – but is no longer – felt as true and decisive has moved’ (Agamben, 2007: 84). The conservation management plans of both national parks are an emblematic example of this separate dimension with its preservation of habitats, biodiversity measures and the lists of protected wildlife species. Wildlife is treated here as in Deleuze and Guattari's (1987) second modality – as animals of status, animals of scientific characteristics. However, laws of preservation, as Beaulieu (2011: 82) notes, have nothing to do ‘with the intrinsic capacities of affectability between the human and the animal’, and the transformation of practices and attitudes towards wildlife and the environment remains independent of political regulations.

Conclusions

The aim of this study was to instigate and underpin an approach to wildlife as an affective multiplicity, aligning with the Deleuzo–Guattarian idea of pack-animals. At the core of this approach lies the affective relationality between humans and wildlife and the recognition of wildlife as a multiplicity. Our findings propose that how we, as humans, treat wildlife – guided by Deleuzo–Guattarian animal modalities – should be a serious reference point in discussion about the coexistence of humans and wildlife. Within local references to species, these modalities – whether as Oedipal animals, State animals or pack-animals – reveal more than just practical or biological distinctions. They highlight the relationality and affective dimensions that arise through encounters, wherein individuals gradually learn to accept nature in its multi-faceted and sometimes unruly forms. This relational engagement challenges the desire for controlled orderly environments and embraces the unpredictability and inherent messiness of nature. In doing so, these encounters foster a deeper, more embodied understanding of wildlife that transcends simple utility or aesthetic appreciation, encouraging a shift towards coexistence that acknowledges nature's complexity and resilience. And although more systematic research is needed to understand the processes and conditions fostering the cultivation of affective relations between humans and wildlife; drawing on this study, we offer several concluding remarks to support the approach to wildlife as an affective multiplicity, wherein ecology is part of Nature and not distinct from it (Herzogenrath, 2008). Firstly, the acknowledgment of wildlife as an affective multiplicity stems from both unique and habitual encounters, unveiling a spectrum of emotions (including care or fear), recognitions (through learning) and attitudes towards the presence of wild animals. This dynamic paves the way for evolving and situated forms of coexistence, taking into account the affective logics described by Lorimer (2015) or the attunement to the landscape (Bonta, 2010), as well as the impact of discursive nature repertoires determining the acceptability of control of various wildlife species and their multiplicities. The latter challenges prevailing conservation narratives and necessitates reflection on how local stakeholders interpret biodiversity and naturalness in relation to nature and wildlife. Secondly, affective relationality signifies openness to the world and the potential for transformation through engagement with the world (Lorimer, 2015; Singh, 2018). This opens up the possibility to explore and understand how affective encounters reshape human–wildlife relationships and how non-corresponding relations with wildlife emerge and are practised. Finally, wildlife as an affective multiplicity evokes thinking about zones of proximity – emergent micro-geographies where affective encounters unfold in various sensual forms, including encounters with traces and milieus of wildlife. And it is exactly through these zones of proximity or as Beaulieu (2011: 83) articulates, by ‘becoming worthy of the zone of proximity that happens’, that affective relationship-building with wildlife may transpire within and beyond national parks.

Highlights

Explores human–wildlife relations in Latvian national parks through a Deleuzo–Guattarian lens on animal modalities.

Applies the Deleuzo–Guattarian concepts of ‘pack-animals’ and ‘affective multiplicity’ to frame dynamic encounters and modes of coexistence between humans and wildlife.

Draws on ethnographic fieldwork to reveal diverse human responses to wildlife and the influence of conservation practices.

Emphasises the importance of recognising wildlife multiplicities and ‘zones of proximity’ in developing affective, relational conservation strategies.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-ene-10.1177_25148486241301992 - Supplemental material for Wildlife as an affective multiplicity: Approaching Deleuzo–Guattarian pack-animals

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-ene-10.1177_25148486241301992 for Wildlife as an affective multiplicity: Approaching Deleuzo–Guattarian pack-animals by Anita Zariņa, Ivo Vinogradovs and Artis Svece in Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space