Jamie Lorimer (University of Oxford) | Location: SH 5.105

Rewilding is a new approach to wildlife conservation that challenges the temporalities of orthodox approaches to identifying and securing desired environments. It encourages conservationists to look to deeper pasts and further futures as they formulate appropriate reference points for the Anthropocene. It figures conservation less as the prevention of species extinction and more as the choreography of ecological processes to secure desired functions and services. This paper develops and applies a novel conceptual framework for critically examining the more-than-human politics of rewilding by drawing together cognate literatures from political ecology, environmental philosophy, time studies and queer and disability studies to theorise the chrononormativities and chronobiopolitics of rewilding. The analysis comes in three parts. The first examines the normative political strategies of baselining and horizoning through which pasts and futures are mobilised to legitimate present rewilding practice. It then explores the environmental biopolitics through which temporal rhythms are choreographed in the practices of rewilding, exploring how processes of ecological succession are curated and how rewilders deal with unexpected events. The final part of the analysis critiques the emerging chrononormativities and chronobiopolitics of rewilding and advocates for alternative models more conducive to multispecies flourishing and resistance in more-than human crip ecologies. The analysis largely focuses on the use of large herbivores and native trees to enable afforestation in Europe, while referring to examples of rewilding elsewhere. The conclusion identifies priorities for future research on time in conservation and calls for continued conceptual engagement at the interface of political ecology and queer and disability theories.

Jamie Lorimer is Professor of Environmental Geography at the University of Oxford. His past and ongoing research explores the history, culture and politics of wildlife conservation, examining the implications of the Anthropocene for how people think about and govern the environment. He combines concepts and approaches from more-than-human geography with those from science studies, using ethnographic, participatory, and historical methods.