Conservation and geography I. Getting into the weeds;the “new” conservation and invasive species management

Abstract

This first progress report in a series on conservation and geography reviews recent work on conservation and invasive species management; scholarship that involves responding to and killing species deemed to be invasive. International and national conservation initiatives characterize invasive species as clear and growing threats to biodiversity that should be controlled. On the other hand, more granular social analyses are challenging the feasibility of such imperatives. Here, I consider three related themes: 1) the new and emergent places that complicate management ideals; 2) how people practice their environmental responsibilities, and the resultant contestations and tensions they face; and 3) how people are considered within analyses, including those living with change and working together collectively and across difference. Neither conservation nor invasive species management can escape their normative framings and the biopolitics of human values, choices, and decision making required to make some die so that others may live. Yet in working with or against the grain of requirements to decide on future life, local people, and their struggles illustrate the social change and actions required of conservation if, as some have argued, conservation must enter a new phase.

Invasive species and a new phase for conservation

Prompted by increasingly alarming projections for planetary health and deteriorating conditions for the possibility of a quality life on Earth, the values and value proposition of conservation are again, on the table. Conserving nature has been the subject of enquiry for well over a century but is gaining recent attention following the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment (Pearson 2016). That assessment has provoked debate about how global conservation goals might be achieved. At its most polarized, views of conserving nature aspiring to wilderness values and purist ideals (Soulé 2013) have been pitted against a so-called “new” conservation wherein the plight of the world's poor and marginalized people should also inform priorities and action (Marvier 2014).

As geographers have noted, questions of power, justice, and politics are at the heart of this debate and reflect how the practices and imaginaries of nature production and securitization are inculcated (Adams 2020). They reveal the extent to which conservation science recognizes the biopolitics of decision making; which kinds of life should be valued over others (Biermann and Mansfield 2014) and what counts as “real” nature (Braverman 2015, 117). Whether or not we have yet entered this new phase, the changing mood might be characterized as a shift from talking about “human” impacts and limiting these, towards a focus on people and their concerns to meet the goals of conservation. Beginning with the relationship between conservation and invasive species management, in this series of three reports on conservation and geography, I explore how contemporary scholarship is grappling with questions of people and conservation, amidst global change and calls for transformation.

Biological invasions may not be the most prominent when the multiple concerns of contemporary conservation are called to mind, but they rank highly as drivers of biodiversity loss, in some places on par with anthropogenic climate change (IPBES 2018; Pyšek et al. 2020). The most recent global assessment of “invasive alien species and their control” notes they are a significant and increasing driver of global extinctions with “profound ecological impact…resulting in complex, undesirable and in some cases irreversible outcomes…beyond which ecosystem restoration is not possible” (Roy et al. 2023, 20). For the first time, this assessment also establishes the social dimensions of biological invasions as critical to understanding and managing invasive species, flagging local and Indigenous knowledges and capacities as essential. Indeed, it calls for “context specific” and “integrated” governance approaches to meet management ambitions, perhaps one of the clearest signals that justice and equity concerns are relevant to successful conservation action (Roy et al. 2023). And yet, concurrently, attempts by conservation scientists to consolidate and unify the field, including for instance the terms applied to management practices (Robertson et al. 2020), would seem to leave little space open for diverse knowledges and practices to emerge as relevant.

Central to this problem is whether and how local perspectives, experiences and capacities are accommodated against conservation imperatives and within decision making processes. An exemplar from New Zealand concerns Brushtail possum eradication. When there are human costs to action—social trauma, disappointment, cynicism, and disengagement—and publicly funded policies that will likely fail, then more open discussions about the terms of success and failure in conservation would seem vital (Palmer and McLauchlan 2023). If such details are deemed critical to meeting conservation targets, then it also seems necessary that conservation should more overtly “get into the weeds”, to understand and plan for how the diverse interests of people feature in the project of conserving nature.

Invasive species and their management present serious challenges to the orthodoxy of conservation work and are thus indicative of how conservation should or might already be changing. They defy attempts to contain them thus drawing attention to the places they are found, resist the conventions of management practice(s), and underscore that key elements of conservation work are reliant on human labor and the presence of people in the landscape. Invasive species management also has a biopolitics within and beyond the calculus of conservation science since it produces novel phenomena and forms alliances with non-invasive life (Everts and Benediktsson 2015). In what follows, I trace how geographers and other scholars are attending to the places, practices, and people involved in invasive species management, through the emergent field of social dimensions scholarship. This work shows that it is in the messy details of how things get done, that we may see glimpses of a new phase for conservation.

The place(s) of conservation

Invasive species spread via their own means and in association with human activity, troubling the borders meant to contain them (Bingham et al. 2008). Their spread not only continues but is accelerating (Mormul et al. 2022), presenting new challenges for management. Yet as others note, continuing trajectories of loss indicate it is not only that new places are emerging, but also that the place of conservation in society needs rethinking (Maxwell et al. 2020; Gurney et al. 2023). Here I consider both the physical spaces relevant to invasive species management, and the social places in which knowledge and governance happen.

First, renewed attention to cultural bias in invasive species management is drawing attention to new and/or forgotten places across the globe. The dominance of the English-speaking and global north world within the relatively young field of invasion ecology is now apparent (Kuebbing et al. 2021; Nuñez et al. 2022; Shackleton et al. 2022). That field has drawn attention to the significance of biological invasions and their impacts, but there is also recognition that as invasions increase, conservation needs to find and adopt ways of engaging with the new places (and thus people) where invasions are occurring (Nuñez et al. 2022). In their review of the environmental costs of biological invasions, Angulo et al. (2021) examine the impact of the dominance of the English language in this field. Among a range of striking differences, they found non-English studies were more likely to address local scales of impact. Overlooking non-English data has led to significant underrepresentation of the true costs of invasions and their management, an effect linked to work published in English being more readily translated into broader global domains. Similarly, Copp et al. (2021) illustrate the problems of linguistic uncertainty in the predominantly English-driven decision support tools used in management. In this case, Artificial Intelligence is proposed as a tool to address the multi-lingual needs of local people, in support of more inclusive and effective management.

Second, mention of AI brings attention to the internet as another emergent place in conservation work involving invasive species. Here, concern relates to the potential of online spaces to change the patterns of spread and increase the movement of organisms, and that online spaces are unregulated. Recent work indicates those fears are being realized in relation to plants (Banerjee et al. 2023; Maher et al. 2023) and aquatic species (Olden et al. 2021). In creating new social spaces, online trade also produces new opportunities for biological hybridization and genetic dilution between native and invasive species. One case examines the social and biological interconnections between different groups of anglers, hobbyists, and aquarists who are connected online, illustrating there are additional circulation and distribution effects when people with differentiated social interests connect (Hirsch et al. 2021).

Other concerns relate to the internet as a source of information shaping how people are indirectly experiencing nature, which may in turn affect perceptions of risk. Jarić et al.’s (2020) focus on charismatic species in biological invasions reviews how this concept may affect perceptions, attitudes, and management. As a set of subjective and socially shared characteristics, these authors argue charisma is associated with more positive responses from people leading to enhanced introduction and establishment success of invasive organisms based on physical, esthetic, or behavioral appeal. In online spaces, discourse around charismatic species may be inflected with emotional language reflecting perceptions which are then are shared. Jaric and colleagues argue that identifying what makes species charismatic, for example through social media or sentiment analysis, may help to decipher why some invasive species are acceptable to society, as well as aid attempts to shift such support. It may also help to enhance public support for management responses, including where different perceptions of species have resulted in social conflict.

It is important to note that the internet as a space for concern requires careful analysis, since discussion about how the risks of invasive species are communicated also risks fostering related and more distributed social anxieties (Ernwein and Fall 2015). Case in point, emerging from the global Covid-19 pandemic, was the alteration to public park visiting conditions and a shift by municipal authorities to engaging with publics in online spaces (Miller-Rushing et al. 2021). Invasive species management in parks was often more difficult at this time but was seen by some authorities as a positive opportunity to engage with citizen scientists (Miller-Rushing et al. 2021). Never-the-less, others have concluded that hype about the internet in catalyzing public participation has overshadowed the role of people in contributing to program success because while more citizen scientists or volunteers may be attracted to and able to engage with conservation in online spaces, their use and engagement can be highly variable (Arts et al. 2020). Since the full potential of online engagement may only be realized when effectively coordinated and managed, this work suggests that promotion of participation through the internet needs to be tempered with critique of it as neoliberal moves to distribute responsibilities (Pagès et al. 2019).

Third, the critique of public engagement in invasive species management noted above highlights that the place and expectations of conservation in society are being rethought. For some, these are questions about reconfiguring how science is incorporated into decision making (Mason et al. 2023). For instance, something that underpins much western anglosphere biosecurity governance is that ecological science informs and should guide management. Presenting work from New Zealand, Mason et al. (2023) instead show that most barriers to effective management are social and argue that more investment in social license and community engagement is required (Mason et al. 2023). Here a more integrated set of scientific approaches is imagined as having a role in reducing conflict and (positively) shaping society.

This literature suggests that part of that integration might require conservation to take a deeper look at places where management is a priority and unpack assumptions about the people who live there. Islands are places well known to be at risk from the impact of invasive species, yet the social dynamics of islands are rarely within the scope of research and management practice (Meyer and Fourdrigniez 2019). There are potentially significant geographic implications for social learning and messaging around invasive species on islands, with work from Hawaii illustrating important attempts to understand subjective norms and intentions (Niemiec et al. 2018; Kalnicky et al. 2019). Other places in the spotlight are those where people may be absent, and where assumptions about poor land management are rife. Reflecting on the “problem” of absent landowners in high amenity areas of New South Wales, Australia, Gill et al. (2023) note the damaging assumptions about “absentees”, often labeled as ignorant, uninterested, and uncapable. Instead, they find, the differences between absentees and residential managers may be overstated, and that absentees experienced barriers reflecting social stigma (Gill et al. 2023).

While attention to these social dimensions of invasive species management is growing, there is a risk that social science and humanities enquiry is reduced to a transactional service in aid of pre-existing conservation goals. Instead, reflecting a history of critical enquiry, are calls for more relational thinking and approaches against the dominant frame of humans as separate to ecologies (Archibald et al. 2020). Archibald et al. (2020), for example, call for a conceptual shift in conservation that enables identification of different value systems, social processes, and politics as constructive and crucial to responding to invasions (Archibald et al. 2020). In this framing, people are co-producers of the disturbances previously attributed to invasive species, in recognition of the diverse agencies involved in driving, shaping, or practicing change.

Contesting practices

Here I consider practices relevant to managing invasive species; how they are prioritized, integrated among other conservation work, and/or become contested. Considerations, like those of the relational scholars above, give weight to an understanding of conservation practices as part of broader social, political, and cultural dynamics. Practices such as trade and human mobility may give rise to invasions, but as part of broader dynamics, these and other practices also contour responses to them, and condition what changes over time (Atchison et al. 2024). An emphasis on the diverse and differentiated agencies of invasive species can aid understandings that they are active not only within ecologies, but also within human social worlds and activities (Head et al. 2015; Argüelles and March 2022). Still, the preoccupation with practices as human persists in recent work.

First, with limited budgets always a problem, it is the practices of invasive species management that are often in focus in recent scholarship, reflecting a concern for effective outcomes and optimal spending. The practices of investment have long been at issue, especially in terms of how societies under invest in acting early (Cuthbert et al. 2022). For example, in their review of over two thousand invasive species management plans in the United States, New Zealand, and Australia, Buxton et al. (2020) illustrate how over 50% of available funding is allocated to research and monitoring, rather than to ongoing action. This work suggests that how invasive species management is prioritized (and budgeted for) is a practice of management that needs to be brought into dialogue with adaptive management goals (Gill et al. 2022), but the indication from Buxton and colleagues is that there is an over emphasis on ecological research and monitoring, leading to suboptimal outcomes.

Relatedly, there has been continuing attention in the literature to responses to biological invasions that emphasize the practices of public participation for program effectiveness (Gioria et al. 2019). Not-with-standing the critique noted previously, continued attention to citizen science emphasizes the role of citizens in detecting early phases of invasions. While citizen-derived data has been demonstrated to be reliable despite “low expectations” regarding quality, Luigi Nimis et al. (2019) suggest that caution is needed about the assumed benefits of and to citizen scientists. In their study comparing the knowledges, attitudes and behaviors of citizen scientists and general publics related to the management of non-native avian species in North America, Phillips et al. (2021) found citizen scientists held more negative or polarized views about non-native species. This work suggests pre-assessment of participants may be valuable, especially if active citizen involvement is anticipated.

Second, how management practices are or should be integrated with one another, and with different drivers of change, is also a concern. In their review of biological invasions and prospects, Essl et al. (2020) note transport, climate change, and socio-economic change as the key drivers of future impacts from invasive species on biodiversity and recommend enhanced global cooperation, adaptive policy, and increased use of technology. Yet, results from an online survey of managers about how to incorporate climate change into the management of biological invasions shows such directives can be very difficult in practice (Beaury et al. 2020). Policy domains such as invasive or threatened (at risk species) species management, are often effectively separated in practice, reflecting a profound lack of resources for integration where issues overlap (Beaury et al. 2020). Empowering managers to embed climate considerations more effectively into invasive species management practice requires increased communication and proactive treatment protocols (Beaury et al. 2020). In a different vein, Agnihotri et al. (2021) take an ethnographic approach to understand the practices of Indigenous people living with tigers in Karnataka State, southern India, who confront the effects of invasive lantana in conservation reserves. Here, confronting the wilderness narratives that prioritize tigers and may attempt to remove people from landscapes, requires rethinking how local practices are vital within broader ecosystem and social dynamics (Agnihotri et al. 2021), pointing to a need for ongoing attention to the practices of knowledge integration and sharing beyond siloed domains.

Third, aside from questions of effectiveness and integration, are challenges to the normative framing of conservation practice. Normative postulates, such as those that emphasize the objectivity of science or which obscure scientific value judgements, are under the microscope in conservation more broadly, with ongoing interrogation of the human impacts discourse, and examination of environmental ethics and value systems which might involve practices that recognize researcher positionality and reflexivity (Pyron and Mooers 2022). For some, the place to begin is with relationships and relational thinking. For Lane-Clark et al. (2024), this means shifting the discourse of invasion biology towards more respectful and considerate language. Others trace such thinking through management practices; in a case study of “feral” horse management in New Zealand, Boyce et al. (2022) address a set of assumptions that pervade management, and which can obscure the pervasive colonial logics embedded in conservation practice. Boyce et al. (2022) call for conservation science to adopt practices of acknowledging personal and cultural bias and to facilitate more diverse voices into management.

More obviously in the spotlight is the continuing debate about the normative practices of killing invasive life and the pursuit of compassionate conservation, which emphasizes ethical conservation practice based on principles of first do no harm and that individual life matters. A call by Inglis (2020) to abandon the term invasive species as morally wrong and scientifically incoherent received a critical response from Callen et al. (2020), who argue that compassionate conservation may undermine efforts to achieve international biodiversity targets. Scale is clearly at issue here, and a ripe space for geographers to intervene in the debate about the purposes and ethics of killing practices. Recognizing that much invasive species management means not only taking life in order for others to live (Biermann and Mansfield 2014), but also deeming some people be made responsible for such work, points to the need for wider conversations about ethics and responsibilities in practice and what contemporary conservation is asking of people (Atchison and Pilkinton 2022).

Also noteworthy are efforts to understand the contested nature of conservation practices, which resort to static and idealized versions of nature. Invasive species management is part of a suite of practices which work to effect particular visions and ontologies of nature (Beilin and West 2016; Gelves-Gomez et al. 2024). Adaptive management seemingly advances the scope of conservation practices by requiring ongoing adaptation through learning, yet as Gelves-Gomez et al. (2024) argue, elements still require reliable, objective knowledge which can exclude other knowledges and experiences. In their important example, the concept of “sentipensar” originating from the Columbian Caribbean coast (translates as feeling-thinking) is proposed to describe the reciprocal modalities of existence between humans and nature. This work opens the door for embodied, and locally and culturally specific more-than-human knowledges to become part of conservation practices (Gelves-Gomez et al. 2024).

People

In this final section, I consider what it means to focus on people in invasive species management, and some implications for social analyses. As noted earlier, global initiatives are recognizing that people have interests in how invasive species are managed. The most recent global assessment of invasive alien species frames people's interests as the threats or impacts that invasive species pose to people, and their quality of life (Roy et al. 2023). For Howard (2019), policies that address biological invasions and recognize the interconnections between people and invasive species therefore need to ensure that they don’t do more harm than good to the people impacted. To date, most policies that deal with biological invasions focus on species populations rather than impacts. Some scientists are calling for policy to focus on impacts over populations, in order that governance be more responsive to local conditions and reflect the long-term nature of this problem (García-Díaz et al. 2021). Social scientists on the other hand are advocating for more attention to the impacts of species and policies in peoples’ lives, as per discussions of adaptation to climate change (Forsyth and McDermott 2022; Nightingale et al. 2022), and the contributions they make (Sax et al. 2022).

For geographers and others, unpacking assumptions about people and their relationships with invasive species is essential to the task of understanding invasive species and their management, reflecting conceptual critique of the universal human (Head 2016), and calls for better integration of the social sciences and conservation (Bennett et al. 2017). Conventional analysis of social factors related to invasive species and their management are becoming more common (Nguyen et al. 2020; Le and Campbell 2022; Dehez 2023). Such studies are part of growing efforts to understand local responses, as well as the capacity of people to act and work together (Atchison et al. 2024). And they are significant because they challenge the orthodoxy that more education is the answer to the social problems presented by invasive species. For example, Ravi and Hiremath (2024) illustrate the plurality of living with invasive species, arguing that local context is especially critical where external capital and social justice issues may be acute. More work is needed to align management with local economic and social interests, but as Ravi and Hiremath (2024) note, developing incentives for active participation, and identifying cooperative relationships may be part of the answer.

Significant also is that studies of local people and their relationships with invasive species show people have differentiated interests. Tadaki et al. (2022), for example, use a relational value framework to explore divergences and convergences in histories and cultural perspectives of trout management in New Zealand, as a basis for future shared decision making. In this regard, the social imaginaries and reciprocal relationships that shape socio-ecological change are significant for understanding and managing biological invasions. Revealing the political implications of diverse ontologies may shape more effective and just conservation policy (Campbell and Gurney 2024) but further elaboration regarding invasive species and their management is required.

The proliferation of local and fine-grain analysis has prompted some to aggregate findings for greater insights. Gill et al.’s (2023) meta-ethnography explores the challenges and opportunities of lay and Indigenous people in invasive plant management, demonstrating how local insights can be scaled up, with conceptual and practical effect. This work represents a shift from viewing people in entirely negative terms to instead garner what can be learnt through experience. In this case, lay and Indigenous people can be regarded as a source of wisdom and capability. In urban contexts, Kaplan et al. (2022) review notes that a predominant focus on the negative effects of invasiveness fails to operationalize the muti-dimensional nature of people's perceptions, which may then fail to engage or resonate with people on a practical level. These are syntheses that build on understanding and enhancing local and collective capacities to respond to invasions (Lien et al. 2021; Graham et al. 2022; Abeysinghe et al. 2023).

Conclusion

Contemporary environmental challenges prompt a paradigm shift in how we understand, negotiate, and intervene in life after nature (Morton 2010), and how we relate to one another in the processes and practices of conservation. Arguably, one of the clearest invitations for transformative thinking on conservation is coming from critical social scientists who are challenging the assumptions and orthodoxies of responses to environmental change (Massarella et al. 2021). This work suggests that in relation to invasive species and their management, the discourses of harm and threat that permeate much conventional invasion ecology may alienate the very people who may be needed to undertake action (Lane-Clarke et al. 2024). I have charted the latest iteration of an expanding body of critical and constructive work illustrating the new and emerging spaces of conservation action, the practices at issue and those that require rethinking, and how local people and their interests might not map straightforwardly onto conventional approaches but need to be understood and respected. Bringing people into the fold means strengthening the theories and practices of social change, inclusion and action that are part of responding to biological invasions and their management.