The Kathryn Fuller Science for Nature Fund

WWF’s Science for Nature Seminars provide a regular forum for the conservation community to learn, discuss, network and inspire. The Series seeks to forward the discussion of cutting edge research relating to international conservation by convening distinguished scientists from across the globe. Seminars are:

• Free
• Open to the public
• Held at 1250 24th St. NW Washington, DC 20037 (WWF’s Washington, D.C. headquarters)
• Held at 4:30 p.m. and followed by a reception at 5:30 p.m.

If you want to attend please register below in advance for each seminar.

For more information, e-mail Kate Graves or call her at 202-495-4604.

2012 Schedule

February 23, 2012

Producing Wildlife: Managing a Conservation Reserve in India during the Anthropocene
As conservation enclosures have given way to more participatory management, a patchwork of new ecological systems and compromises have arisen, making the problem of wildlife conservation only more muddled. Can chaotic, semi-humanized environments be controlled to protect rare endemic species?

Reviewing recent research at the Kumbhalgarh Wildlife Reserve in Rajasthan India, findings suggest that many wildlife species - those adapted to rule-breaking and illegal grazing, including panthers, antelope, monkeys and jungle fowl - have managed to thrive, while others have declined. The result is a novel ecological system constituted by wild and domesticated elements interwoven into a patchwork.

This has not been a product of planned management, but instead a self-organizing system of land uses that emerges in the daily struggle for productive resources within which animals, local people, and over-burdened foresters make do through a series of compromises, deals, and arrangements (locally: “jugaar”). This suggests that while wildlife species cannot be preserved, they might instead be produced, with implications for both the sustainability and democracy of novel ecologies.

About Paul Robbins:
Paul Robbins is Professor and Director of the School of Geography and Development at the University of Arizona. He holds a PhD in Geography from Clark University and a BA in Anthropology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Robbins is an author of several books, including Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction (second edition, 2012) and scores of articles on conservation, politics, and environment. His research focuses on the relationships between individuals (homeowners, hunters, professional foresters), environmental actors (lawns, elk, mesquite trees), and the institutions that connect them.

He and his students seek to explain human environmental practice and knowledge, the influence non-humans have on human behavior and organization, and the implications these interactions hold for ecosystem health, local community, and social justice.

Past projects have examined wildlife conservation in India, elk management in Montana, pesticide use in the suburban United States, forest product collection in New England, and mosquito management in the U.S. Southwest. His current work focuses on biodiversity in commodity agroforestry plantations in Central India.

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