Fry, Thomas Jake; (2020) “These birds don’t belong here”: The livelihood and sociocultural impacts of rewilded White-Tailed Eagles in the Scottish Highlands. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

Text Fry, Thomas. 2020. Thesis Final Draft.pdf Access restricted to UCL open access staff Download (2MB)

Abstract

The overall objective of this research can be surmised in a single concise question: “what are the livelihood and sociocultural impacts of a rewilded predator on a European upland farming community?” I undertook empirical research amongst crofting communities, a form of traditional small-scale hill farming practiced in the Highlands and Islands of North-West Scotland. I argue that a novel species or new ecological change does not simply enter into and impact upon an existing ecological system, but also enters into a dynamic agrarian landscape marked by distinctive farming systems and their associated vital and material human-animal dynamics, and these features will condition and mediate any social and economic impacts of rewilding initiatives. The landscapes of Skye where crofters and the eagles reside are thus characterised by a set of socioecological relations between those working the land and its inherent biophysical and ecological processes, which co-produce the livelihoods, land-use, physical characteristics and sociocultural representations inherent to it. In the case of the White-Tailed Eagle, this means that historical and current structural changes in upland agrarian economies amplify and shape the direct material impacts of eagle predation on farming systems, and that the birds themselves sit outside of the established embodied, reciprocal and emotive relations between farmers and non-humans that determine localised, personal and political ideas of belonging. This thesis addresses a distinct empirical gap in the emerging literature on rewilding, restoration and reintroductions by pursuing an in-depth, critical appraisal of their impacts, and their intersection with processes of agrarian change. In doing so it also makes a strong theoretical contribution by deploying an innovative conceptual approach that combines political ecological understandings of co-produced landscapes with phenomenological and post-humanist understandings of dwelt, affective multispecies engagements.

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