Through the case of bison management, this essay explores how conservation policies govern multispecies relations and reproduce tensions between ecological protection, Tribal sovereignty, and livestock interests.
Food Sovereignty in Madagascar
Through research on famine, foraging, rice cultivation, and cash-crop economies alongside a collaborative food-sharing activity, this essay examines tensions between biodiversity conservation, subsistence practices, and Malagasy post-colonial struggles for food sovereignty.
Ethics of Mollusk Conservation in the Chesapeake Bay
Oyster restoration in the Chesapeake Bay increasingly draws on Indigenous ecological histories and shell midden archaeology. But who has the right to access, interpret, and mobilize these knowledges?
Parks, Co-Management and the #LandBack Movement
Across North America, co-management is often presented as a progressive model for conservation. But when decision-making authority remains unequal, is shared management meaningful change or the continuation of older colonial structures?
Podcast – Lab Animals as Collaborators: Response-ability and Care in Research
Animal testing often evokes strong images and intense debate that draw binaries of pro or against. Through the concepts of Donna Haraway and case studies, we discuss the nuances and opportunities to balance research outcomes with more thoughtful relationships between people and lab animals.
Podcast – Seeing What the Law Can’t: Rights of Nature and the Anthropo-Not-Seen
Drawing on Marisol de la Cadena’s concept of the “anthropo-not-seen,” we discuss whether granting legal rights to nature can create visibility for Indigenous ontologies, or if it risks reinforcing the very systems that have historically erased them.
Podcast – Plants Are People Too: Debating the Ethics of Anthropomorphism in Conservation
How does anthropocentrism shape scientific relationships with plants and animals?
Podcast – The Politics of Life: How Valuation of Species Impacts Conservation
How and why people choose which species to value in conservation?
Haunting as Anti-Method: Ecological Rage in the Wake of Organized Disappearance
In landscapes marked by genocide, state terror, and ecological transformation, ghosts do not simply represent what was lost but return to disrupt settled temporalities, animating struggles over justice, memory, and the ethics of killing. Tracing a personal and ethnographic encounter in Tierra del Fuego, this essay explores how rage, refusal, and haunting unsettle conservation logics... Continue Reading →
Conservation Ethics Syllabus Fall 2025
ConsEthicsSyll Fall 2025Download